--I WISH YOU COULD HAVE SEEN IT

…I sure love Alabama Shakes.  You would, too.  They’re great to listen to on the treadmill.

…This is pretty funny and will make you smile.  (I did.)  Watch it to the end:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNM0ENUCO5I

…A friend told me about a hot, Las Vegas-based magazine that was looking for 2,000 word stories with a theme based on community, charity, or the lack thereof.  It pays $300 per piece, which is a very nice sum these days.  So I decided to write something about when I would pick fruit as a kid in order to have money for school clothes.  I shot it off, one day short of the deadline and it got accepted.

Little things like that mean so much when you’re a writer whose confidence is always toggling from high to low.

The story is called “Strawberry Fields Forever.”  I’ll let you see it once it’s out (in print).

…Where I live there are incredible sunsets almost every night.  The sky is usually a mix of taupe, lavender and periwinkle.  The other night the clouds formed an enormous purple heart, backlit by the sun.  It was something else.

I wish you could have seen it.

…This is a little corny, but I like it anyway:

                                                      Life Is Like Hot Chocolate

A group of graduates, well established in their careers, were talking at a reunion and decided to go visit their old university professor, now retired.  During their visit, the conversation turned to complaints about stress in their work and lives. Offering his guests hot chocolate, the professor went into the kitchen and returned with a large pot of hot chocolate and an assortment of cups - porcelain, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite telling them to help themselves to the hot chocolate.

When they all had a cup of hot chocolate in hand, the professor said: "Notice that all the nice looking expensive cups were taken, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. The cup that you're drinking from adds nothing to the quality of the hot chocolate. In most cases it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was the hot chocolate, not the cup; but you consciously went for the best cups... And then you began eyeing each other's cups.

"Now consider this: Life is the hot chocolate; your job, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain life. The cup you have does not define, nor change the quality of life you have. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the hot chocolate God has provided us.

"God makes the hot chocolate, man chooses the cups. The happiest people don't have the best of everything, they just make the best of everything that they have. Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly.  And, enjoy your hot chocolate."