as seen on Pinterest, also here: http://livingthroughaquote.tumblr.com/

Sometimes I have to end Sunday with something happy or I feel like Monday morning is going to be that much harder. I was on Facebook earlier today and a friend from high school appeared in the update feed. She doesn't show up often on FB, but when her photos or status does, they are always something worth stopping to look at. She and her family live on the other side of the world and seem to have lots of neat adventures.

This girl was always so nice to me way back in school and we even got to know each other some, forming a friendship over Dean Koontz novels and George Michael's Faith, then other books and music. Maybe because of this and how she made school and the place we both worked at after school so much fun, I am so happy to see the honest joy in her pictures.

Her little girls and husband are so adorable. I know not everyone gets that happy ever after, but it sure looks like she did. Everyone deserves good in their lives, of course, but it makes me smile to discover "whatever happened" to genuinely nice people from my past and is one of the few reasons I like Facebook and still use it.




Something else that made me smile is this; I saw it on Tumblr:

Sunday odds and ends, so far...

-In last week's Sunday Times there's a review for Father John Misty's new album I Love You, Honeybear (an awesome album, both loving and hysterical) with this great snippet:

When the mariachi trumpets burst forth on "Chateau Lobby #4" you feel your heart will explode. How many albums can you say that about?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6NuYJ0RzRg


-My favorite quote I've read so far this weekend: "I was born to be a spinster, and by God, I'm going to spin."<<This is taken from Winifred Holtby's South Riding in a Wall Street Journal review. Lately, their book reviews have had me adding lots to my TBR pile.

-In today's Washington Post there's a review of the new Stevie Nicks biography. It sounds like it leaves the reader wanting more from a book about one of the most intriguing singers ever:

Writing about this drama is easy. Writing insightfully about the process of creating music is much harder, especially when the subject is somebody like Nicks, an untrained but ingenious singer-songwriter who often sounds as mystified by her extraordinary songs as anybody else is.

Howe documents it all — the sex, the drugs and the mystification — with the nonjudgmental vigilance of a devoted fan who has little interest in assessing Nicks’ place in the pop-rock pantheon. Her book is at its most fun — which is to say, somewhat — when she plays hooky from the dutiful reportage and indulges in fansite-style observations and jokes.

The rest of the review is here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/what-more-is-there-to-know-about-stevie-nicks/2015/02/19/37cc0d58-b064-11e4-827f-93f454140e2b_story.html

-Speaking of talented singers...there's also a new memoir out by Deborah Voigt. Much of the review here focuses on sexism and double standards. I love this part the most:

In opera — an art form that, more than any other, requires a suspension of disbelief — only the singing should ultimately matter. Yes, the singers must act convincingly, and costumes and sets are vital to the experience. But the artist portraying Aida or Turandot, Isolde or Norma, should not have to conform to relatively modern standards of physical beauty if she happens to sing like an angel.
“How can a three-hundred-pound woman play the romantic role of Aida if the audience doesn’t believe the tenor onstage would find her attractive?” Voigt asks. We believe because of the voice. A great singer can float a delicate pianissimo or belt out a dramatic monologue or thrill us with her rapid coloratura or caress her way through the most agonizing love music. What makes opera unlike anything else is the power of the singer to excite, enchant and seduce, to communicate every emotion imaginable using just one thing: her voice. Not her face, not her body, but her voice.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/criticized-for-her-weight-opera-star-deborah-voigt-speaks-up/2015/02/19/fe69e79e-b6b0-11e4-aa05-1ce812b3fdd2_story.html

Saturday night music on a quiet snowy night...

 

 

One of my favorite songs from the early 80s is "It Might Be You" by Stephen Bishop, a track probably most known for appearing in the film "Tootsie."  I hear it whenever it shows up on my iPod shuffle (like just) and when I do it still makes me tear up like it did the first time. I don't know why it makes me cry.

 

I don't think it's a sad song so much as a wistful one. It is also beautiful and sweet one, and somehow sums up exactly how it must feel when you finally meet the person you've been wondering about your whole life.

 

Stephen Bishop, by the way, has also other lovely songs as well...I've always felt he was a bit underrated and that his others are just as good and heartfelt as "It Might Be You."

I like my iTunes library best for listening, but since I have an Amazon Prime account and Prime Music comes with that, I've been trying it out, making it easier to add even more music to my phone.

 Amazon doesn't have the extensive library Spotify has, but I do like this feature:


http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?&docId=1001407921

Plus, I like that you can add songs and even entire albums to your account with no extra charge as long as your membership is current. Or, if you don't want the entire compilation, you can click the plus signs and the track will be added to your account:

 

 

 

"Poison & Wine," absolutely and painfully gorgeous

 

 

Except for during wintertime, I enjoy going to grocery stores more often than not. For some reason, they fascinate me. This is from this weekend's Wall Street Journal:

A Grocery Clerk and Proud of It

We’ve taken our knocks from Hollywood, but life in the aisles is like being in a movie. Only I get to write the script.

by Jeffrey Shaffer

I recently took a job that is often ridiculed as menial and mindless. But I have found it to be interesting and rewarding: I work in a grocery store.

Hollywood hasn’t been kind to this line of work. Anyone who has seen the 1994 movie “The Shawshank Redemption” knows what happened to inmate Brooks Hatlen ( James Whitmore ). After decades of incarceration he was finally paroled but couldn’t adjust to life outside prison walls. One major source of disillusionment was his job at a local market filling grocery bags, and before long he gave up and hanged himself.

 The hit Netflix series “House of Cards” includes a snappy putdown in the first season when Claire Underwood ( Robin Wright ) is forced to cut the staff of her nonprofit organization, including the 59-year-old office manager. Claire offers to write a letter of recommendation but the woman angrily replies, “To do what, bag groceries?”Well, I’m past 59 and my résumé includes stints in radio, television news and print journalism. Turns out the skills I learned from those job are a big help in my new work place. For me, life in the aisles is much like being in a movie, except there are no cameras to interfere with the action and I get to write my own lines every time a customer asks for help.

The store is owned by a Northwest-based company that emphasizes friendly service and looks for opportunities to carry products made locally.

This is an interesting time to be in the grocery business, when millions of Americans are becoming seriously interested in food production, nutrition, diet regimens and cooking styles. My fellow employees and I are all active participants in the collective conversation.

I was hired as a “floater,” so I work in all departments, which is fine with me because it provides a range of opportunities for making personal connections. That’s probably the main reason I took the job. Writing is often a solitary process, but I’m not a solitary person. I like direct engagement with people. Doing interviews was always my favorite part of producing news stories, editing them much less so. Now I’m in a spontaneous, edit-free environment—and it comes with a nice benefits package.
The shoppers are a snapshot of America. I’ve talked with teenagers, parents (married and single), and elderly women who decided that having purple hair would be a fun new look. Some customers have tattoos and body piercings. Hearing true-life stories told in person will always be my favorite form of social media.

Long visits by shoppers aren’t unusual; the store has a salad bar, kitchen, deli counter and dining area. Sometimes we have live music featuring local talent. On busy days, I feel like I’m in a community center that also offers groceries.

The bakery is the most enjoyable department. Bread is elemental, and seeing the process that brings it into existence is compelling. I think I’ve gotten pretty good at selling it—my mantra when I’m behind the bakery counter is “No loaf left behind.” I want the shelves empty when I leave at night. Hasn’t happened yet, but I’m making progress.

One request I’d like to make of all supermarket customers everywhere: Next time you’re in the parking lot and a delivery truck blocks your path as it maneuvers toward the loading dock, don’t get mad and honk. That truck is carrying items you want. Keeping the product pipeline flowing smoothly and on schedule is a crucial element of the free-enterprise system, not to mention the means by which most of us stay fed.

Sometimes I look toward the store’s front entrance and imagine Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now” peering through the window. That’s another film that slams my job, in the scene where Kurtz expresses his utter contempt for Captain Willard ( Martin Sheen ) by telling him, “You’re an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.” If only Kurtz could spend some time working in a supermarket these days—maybe a stint at the bakery counter would cheer him up.

 

 

It's just after six and less than an hour ago two of my friends from work texted they just got home. Today averaged about an hour drive for people living less than ten miles from home and up to five hours for those living about thirty miles away. I am so glad they are home.

 

It's definitely a good night to be inside. Here in Columbia, the snow is still coming down. A good website for checking out traffic and road conditions is right here, though obviously right now is not a good time to go out at all...just for future reference:

 

http://www.chart.state.md.us/TravInfo/trafficcams.php#

 

 

So it did turn out to be a big snow event and we were let out early from work and I am so glad I was able to face my fears of driving in bad weather and not freak out like I used to in the past. I think it's nice to have a role model in your life because you can think, "What would that person do?" and then you try and face the situation the way she would.

And facing your fears (even if driving in the snow may not be everyone's, most of us still have something we fear greatly) is awesome:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/amyanderson/2013/10/16/face-your-fear-the-result-might-be-amazing/




Chicken Little fever has struck Maryland with all the reports of impending snow. It's so contagious and a few people today are just a tad..um, unfriendly? ...so I am just needing to see this today:

“I don't know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, 'Well, if I'd known better I'd have done better,' that's all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, 'I'm sorry,' and then you say to yourself, 'I'm sorry.' If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one's own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that's rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don't have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach.”
― Maya Angelou

 http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/self-acceptance