Watching Baseball

My dad loves watching baseball, and from an early age it's rubbed off on me. Some people say that baseball is too slow to be exciting, but any fan will tell you that those people don't know what to look for. I'll be honest and say that I don't follow baseball too much, but I enjoy watching when I can. My friend is a huge Phillies fan, and I've had a lot of fun following them with him, learning the players and a little bit about their strengths and approaches. We've noticed that Phillies fans have a reputation for being boorish and rude, but hope that we can help disprove the stereotypes!


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Hula Hooping

This weekend I got to try my buddy's hula hoop. It wasn't like the ones I played with when I was little. This one was much larger in diameter and weighted instead of being a hollow tube of plastic. It had a satisfying heft that counterintuitively made it easier to keep it going than the lightweight kind. I gave it a whirl and found I was better than I remembered. Then I kept going, and when I stopped I was out of breath with a huge smile on my face. My joy came not from pretending to be a kid again, but from falling into the moment and not thinking of anything but the gyrating hoop around my waist--spinning meditation. That and the endorphin rush of shaking all around!

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Support

This week events both positive and not-so-positive have reminded me how important it is to have a strong support network of people you love and who love you--friends, family, significant others, friendly co-workers, etc.  In the good times, it feels great to be able to experience joy and excitement with other people.  Sharing can intensify happy emotions and also, interestingly, help to diminish unhappy ones.  When events take an unexpected negative turn, talking with other people really helps me step back and put things in perspective.  I feel very lucky and grateful to have people in my life with whom I can share the good and the bad and keep on trucking together.  Thanks for propping me up, being sounding boards, offering advice, sharing your good news, and trusting me with your bad news.  Together we're better!

Scrabble

This week I've become fairly addicted to an iPhone game called Words With Friends.  It's basically Scrabble, played like chess-by-mail via the interweb.  I can challenge friends anywhere to a game, then my phone lets me know when they've made a move.  I can take as long as I want to make my move, and so on.  My LDF was playing it with her sister all the time, and I finally grew curious.  I had no idea how hooked I would get.  I've always enjoyed Scrabble, but never been a fanatic.  But this game really gets me.  I have to exercise considerable willpower not to play when I need to be doing other things.  As an addiction, though, it seems pretty innocuous.  It was a free download, and if anything it's challenging the verbal portion of my brain, increasing my vocabularity.  If you have free time, I highly encourage you to look into Words With Friends.  It's available for Android as well as iPhone, and also on the computer, I believe.  My user name is GingerDana, and I'm ready to play you!

May Day

Happy May Day!  I kind of forgot it was happening until the day was nearly over, but I'm a big fan of the holiday.  I love celebrating vitality, fertility, spring, and rebirth (which I think is what the day is about, even though in North Carolina spring has long since sprung by May 1).  April showers bring May flowers, and there's an extremely enjoyable song in the musical Camelot about the arrival of this "lusty month".  I hope some of you enjoyed dancing around the May Pole today, and that this month brings much joy to you all!

Mattress Moving

These two ducks look like they could be carrying anything from a giant ice cream sandwich to a big cross-stitch frame, but in fact they are schlepping a mattress.  On Saturday I moved two beds with my friend.  We borrowed my parents' minivan and moved his bed frame to his new place, then turned around and moved my old bed back to my parents' house since I don't really use it anymore.  I've lived in my current space for almost two years now, and had forgotten exactly how tiring it is to move big furniture.  I don't mind it, and it's pretty satisfying to see tangible progress as you move and get to put your muscles to use, but phew, it's hard work!  Also, it always, ALWAYS takes longer than you think it will.  Every time I move I think about how much stuff I have, and how much stuff many of us have in the U.S.  Possessions can be useful and I get pleasure from many of mine, but I look forward to thinning my holdings a bit for the next time I have to move.

Simple Pleasures, April 2011 Edition

On Friday I caught up with some good friends over dinner.  We live in two different towns, so we rendezvous-ed at a big shopping center halfway between them.  The dining options were somewhat limited, and we picked a mass-market Asian fusion kind of place.  The food was not unpleasant, but really sub-par as far as Asian food goes.  I had a dish with tofu and broccoli, and the tofu was just as it would be if you opened a package of smooth tofu and cut it into pieces--bland and slippery, not crispy or flavorful like it often is at Chinese restaurants.  The sauce was thin and not particularly flavorful either.  Nevertheless, the whole experience was very pleasant because I was there with friends and the weather was great.  We got to be silly just like we always are when we hang out, and we got to catch up on what's been going on in each other's lives.  After dinner we had planned to see a movie, but nothing that was playing looked too good, so we just wandered through a bookstore instead.  The evening was a prime example of the power of simple pleasures to bring joy.

Comic Timing

Good timing can make or break a joke.  I think we've all experienced situations where somebody made a simple remark that was utterly hilarious not because of what it was, but because of when it was delivered.  The other night I was having dinner with some folks after an event at work, and there was a certain amount of local name-dropping going on.  Somebody mentioned a musician, then somebody else said, "Oh, yeah, I think I saw him play at Shakori Hills."  The first person said, "I used to teach him on the drums."  Then someone else said, "I remember when he used to play with a friend of mine."  The second person said, "Oh, yeah." And then, at exactly the perfect moment person number four breaks in with "He's my son," which of course was not true, but gently poked fun at the one-upmanship going on.  We all burst out laughing.  It was beautiful.