Really?

Aquarius: Today's Daily Horoscope

Your mental energy is helping you fire off great ideas all day today — so find some way to record them all without wasting a precious moment of inspiration! Life speeds up somewhat later on.

Really? Guess I'd better take a shower and get dressed. Really?

get yours here

Must-See Owl TV

Sorry. My owl fixation is becoming an issue for me as well as my family. But you MUST watch this clip. It is a pair of barn owls in England who successfully raised a clutch of 8. Yes, EIGHT owlets during one of the rainiest summers in history. If you don't know, barn owls cannot fly in rain. Which means that they cannot hunt and feed their babies. That these owls were able to succeed in that weather is, basically, a miracle. This is such a sweet tribute to the pair, and the music is hauntingly perfect. Enjoy! And if you need more owlet action, you can always pop in on Molly and McGee's brood. Happy Saturday my friends.

Writing What You Know

Is anybody looking for a new project? Because I am always up for a new project if it means I can stop doing the other 200 projects I've started and become bored with my chores and stretch my mind a bit. Anyway, there is a FREE memoir writing class here. Marion Roach Smith is an accomplished writer, and with her latest, Writing What You Know: Realia, she guides the reader through all the steps necessary to get it all down:

"The great writer, Flannery O'Connor, said that anyone who survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life. She's right, of course. But how do you get to that material? And how to choose which story to write first, which truth to tell, and in which order do you write those tales?
If you are blogging, journaling, scrapbooking or scribbling notes about your life, you are writing memoir. I will help you dig among your stuff and get your story written in interesting, enlightening, readable and possibly sale-able ways.
Along the way you will be amazed to learn what all memoirists discover--that writing what you know is the single greatest portal to self discovery."


So, does anyone want to do this? I think it would be a great exercise, and, who knows, maybe we all can go on book tour together;)

Nashville on my Mind

There is so much horror out there in the world that I just want to power down sometimes. And then you come across an article like this one. It reaffirms my faith in our ability to do the right thing, and it makes me ever so proud to be a product of this environment:

We Are Nashville

By

Patten Fuqua

Published: May 4, 2010

Allow me a moment to step away from the usual voice of this website.

What I am about to write has absolutely nothing to do with hockey.

If you live outside of Nashville, you may not be aware, but our city was hit by a 500-year flood over the last few days. The national news coverage gave us 15 minutes, but went back to focusing on a failed car bomb and an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. While both are clearly important stories, was that any reason to ignore our story? It may not be as terror-sexy as a failed car bomb or as eco-sexy as an oil spill, but that’s no reason to be ignored.

The Cumberland River crested at its highest level in over 80 years. Nashville had its highest rainfall totals since records began. People drowned. Billions of dollars in damage occurred. It is the single largest disaster to hit Middle Tennessee since the Civil War. And yet…no one knows about it.

Does it really matter? Eventually, it will…as I mentioned, there are billions of dollars in damage. It seems bizarre that no one seems to be aware that we just experienced what is quite possibly the costliest non-hurricane disaster in American history. The funds to rebuild will have to come from somewhere, which is why people need to know. It’s hard to believe that we will receive much relief if there isn’t a perception that we need it.

But let’s look at the other side of the coin for a moment. A large part of the reason that we are being ignored is because of who we are. Think about that for just a second. Did you hear about looting? Did you hear about crime sprees? No…you didn’t. You heard about people pulling their neighbors off of rooftops. You saw a group of people trying to move two horses to higher ground. No…we didn’t loot. Our biggest warning was, “Don’t play in the floodwater.” When you think about it…that speaks a lot for our city. A large portion of why we were being ignored was that we weren’t doing anything to draw attention to ourselves. We were handling it on our own.

Some will be quick to find fault in the way rescue operations were handled, but the fact of the matter is that the catastrophe could not have been prevented and it is simply ignorant beyond all reason to suggest otherwise. It is a flood. It was caused by rain. You can try to find a face to stick this tragedy to, but you’ll be wrong.

Parts of Nashville that could never even conceivably be underwater were underwater. Some of them still are. Opry Mills and the Opryland Hotel are, for all intents and purposes, destroyed. People died sitting in standstill traffic on the Interstate. We saw boats going down West End. And, of course, we all saw the surreal image of the portable building from Lighthouse Christian floating into traffic and being destroyed when cars were knocked into it. I’m still having trouble comprehending all of it.

And yet…life will go on. We’ll go back to work, to school, to our lives…and we’ll carry on. In a little over a month, I’ll be on this website talking about the draft. In October, we’ll be discussing the new Predators’ season with nary a thought of these past few days. But in a way, they changed everyone in this town. We now know that that it can happen to us…but also know that we can handle it.

Because we are Nashville.

source

Cannot Stop...

...thinking about Yeardley Love, UVa, every parent's baby, and every parent's nightmare.

My Twitter obsession is not helping me, either:

@jeffrossen: To give you an idea how disturbing the details are ...in my interview with police chief today, he began to cry.

I love #UVa RT @UVA: Lawn residents at #UVa will light candles outside their rooms tonight in memory of Yeardley Love.

Reports saying that Huguely admitted to kicking through the door and shaking Love such that her head banged repeatedly against the wall.

This is terrifying. I am really, really sad.

"After the hearing, defense lawyer Fran Lawrence told reporters that Love's death was 'not intended but an accident with a tragic outcome.'"

RIP Yeardley Love. My thoughts are with her family, Huguely, his family, the teams and the entire #UVa and Charlottesville communities

The more I keep reading about today's news at #UVa, the sadder I get. :(8:36 PM May 3rd via TweetDeck
I wish my babies would hurry up and come home for the Summer.

Tuesday Text: Parentexting™

Wherein I am dissed....Many times over by two children.

See how I so adroitly change the subject?

Then we have the boy:

Sigh.

I really need to get a job.

Gah

Aquarius

January 20 - February 18

May 03, 2010

Aquarius: Today's Daily Horoscope

Even though you're not (entirely) at fault, you are still the one to get most of the blame today. That's just how life works out sometimes, and you need to show your superiority and take it like an enlightened being.

I think I'll just go back to bed. What's yours like?