--I NEED YOU

…I leave for Napa today.  Wine will be willed, food will be ingested, brain cells will be squashed.

Doesn’t it sound like fun?

When I get back I head to Portland/Vancouver to hang with friends and essentially do more of what I’ll be doing in Napa.

Hey, life is short, right?

…The other day I was asked to write a story for a journal.  The theme is “Shaken” so yesterday I wrote a piece (a longer one, for me—1,300 words) about a couple in distress, who are leaving town for a getaway, end up hitting a deer in the highway, and then come to term with their demons.  It’s called “A Car Ride of Second Chances.”  My daughter gave me the title incidentally.

…I saw this article in the Seattle paper and thought it was kind of funny:

            It’s tough being a Starbucks barista who has to write customer names on cups.

            Is it “John” with an “h”? “Thanh Ha” with three h’s?” It’s all part of Starbucks’ effort to personalize things.

            But one barista got a little too personal, when a customer named Virginia ordered a drink from a Starbucks in Hong Kong. According to the woman’s sister, the drink came with Virginia’s name scrawled as “Vagina.”

            “Fancy your staff not being able to spell an American name like Virginia. Forgiving she has been with every misspelled cup,” the woman’s sister said.

            “Her cup was once ‘Virgin.’ Every Starbucks experience for her has been coupled with fear and anticipation. But THIS is just UNACCEPTABLE.”

…Here are a few things I like:

"A good way to start each day is by asking, 'What can I do to take care of myself today?'"

"To know how to say what others only know how to think is what makes men poets or sages; and to dare to say what others only dare to think is what makes men martyrs or reformers -- or both." Elizabeth Charles

“Don't ask who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.” George Seferis

“I have felt the swaying of the elephant's shoulders;
and now you want me to climb
on a jackass? Try to be serious.”
― Mirabai