Month: February 2012

The Reluctant Ninja….

    Here I am, hard at work transcribing, editing and compiling eight years of notes from three different notebooks, several different legal pads, and a multitude of sticky notes gathered over countless hours of martial arts training, classes and seminars. This daunting project is in anticipation of  testing for my next belt level. Some day. This next level is a comprehensive test which includes everything I have learned (or supposed to have learned) since the first day I entered the dojo and began training. Reluctantly, of course. You may recall that I was going to take a few classes, learn a few things, and then quit. I thought it was a form of recreation. Then I discovered how serious these people were about their training. I mean, they had notebooks, for Heaven’s sake! “What...

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Valentine’s Day….hearts, flowers and toilets.

    It’s funny to see how people respond to Valentine’s Day. Love it or hate it, it shows up each year. And it’s here to stay. Yesterday one of my single friends asked me if my husband had planned anything special for me this year. Why, yes, as a matter of fact, he did.     I had the day off, so I was going to go to ballet class in the morning, and after I came home we were going shopping for a new bathroom. For some reason my friend thought this was hilarious and couldn’t stop laughing. Finally she said, “How romantic! Shopping for a new bathroom on Valentine’s Day!”     I thought about it for a few minutes and realized that nothing says I love you like looking at toilets. It’s less fattening than chocolate. And lasts longer than flowers....

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Reflections and confessions of a techno-moron.

      Don’t you love to laugh? I certainly do. I especially love to laugh at myself, and at some of my patterns of reluctance in trying new things. Just as I had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the world of martial arts, it was the same story with technology.        The truth is that just a year ago all I could do on a computer was check my email. I didn’t even know what a blog was, let alone imagine myself having one. I had no idea what Facebook was or why anyone would ever want to be on it. I spent two years traveling a lot, and in the airports I noticed how many people had their computers with them. I wondered why anyone would possibly want or need their computer. And almost everyone was actually using them. I would glance curiously at the people busily tapping away...

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