Brewing this weekend

Brewing coffee, my reviews for When I Get Married and Around the World in 80 Days, and my playlist for this evening’s run.

Love, marriage, and happily ever after?

When I Get Married by Jerusha Clark

When I get married…
I’ll be happy.
I’ll be content.
I’ll be complete.
I’ll be ________.

Fill in your idea of what marriage will be like.

If you ask me, it’s like a huge puffy cloud of bliss where I get to go home to my best friend and lover every day. He’ll make me coffee in the morning, he’ll listen to all my stories, he’ll never get tired of doing manly chores for me, he’ll always be handsome. And that’s just to start.

I’m sure every single man or woman has their own expectations of what married life will be like. I’m not sure where mine came from, but they sound right to me.

Jerusha Clark made me take a closer look at my perspective not just of marriage but of myself, my relationship with God, my ideas about important issues that aren’t so popular, such as dealing with loneliness, how I measure my worth, love as sacrifice.

I’m still just on the third chapter of When I Get Married, but I’ve loved it since the Introduction. Jerusha writes well: her chapters are well-crafted, her ideas flowing, her language natural, her insights fresh. It’s been a long time since I read a book that doesn’t feel like the pages are preaching at me. Instead I’m drawn into an engaging conversation where thoughts and questions are exchanged. And for once, non-fiction with truly thoughtful, reflective ideas!

So that’s proof you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.

Fill in the blank: When I get married,  ___________.

Fiction

Around the World in 80 Dates

I enjoy reading fiction. I only read non-fiction when I absolutely have to. But with fiction, I feel at home.

Right now I’m reading Around the World in 80 Dates by Christa Ann Banister. Nothing spectacular in the first chapter, but it reads easily enough. It’s about the “confesions of a Christian serial dater.” Haven’t heard of this concept; perhaps chick lit for Christians?

I’m not such a big fan of chick lit. To me it seems like women’s thoughts displayed without censor, and I wouldn’t want to read pages and pages of that. It just has a tendency to be the same whiny, shrilly run-on sentence every other paragraph or so. It’s so new that it’s old. i mean, it’s trying so hard to veer away from the usual storytelling narrative voice and be something else, something fresh, something now, but ends up feeling tired.

At any rate, this one isn’t chick lit, at least not yet. I’ll suspend judgment until I’m well underway. For now, I just want something entertaining and brainless (but no mile-a-minute thought bursts) after a long day. And this seems to fit the bill.

Prove me wrong: What’s the last good chick lit you read?

Since I was here last

this place seems to have upped a bit. Nice dashboard interface, makes blogging a treat. Thought I should practice writing and putting thoughts together coherently, and what better avenue than a blog. I’ve been posting book thoughts on Multiply, but it never felt the same as having an actual blog and being faithful to it. So here’s to second (and nth) chances–in blogging and in life!

Because wordpress is making it so easy, I’m also feeding my Twitter updates here. I recently joined Twitter and have only this to say: it makes you think about the universe. I mean, technology connects and alienates us at the same time, doesn’t it? The smaller the world gets, the bigger it seems, and the more you know about other people’s daily lives, the more you don’t really know anybody deeply anymore.

Are you on Twitter? Why or why not?

Death of a loved one

African lovebirds update: Big Bird has been quiet for days. And quiet is not something we’re used to in this household ever since the birds came to live with us. For several days, no peep from Big Bird. She slept most of the time, was not responsive, and seemed on the verge of death-by-loneliness (bird term for suicide due to emotional causes).

All this time, we didn’t know Medium Bird had died; he did it in the privacy of their home-box.

Last night, Big Bird slept inside the home-box. This morning, we found Medium Bird’s remains. It was a beautiful goodbye for Big Bird. I wonder what things she had said to Medium Bird during the night, what things I would’ve said had I been in her place. I wonder how it would feel to pour your heart to someone who cannot possibly hear you anymore, who is physically there but spiritually gone, whose body has to be taken away when morning comes but until then you can’t let go. I wonder what I would say if I knew I only had a few more moments before dealing with the reality of death.

This morning, we said goodbye at last to Medium Bird. And because Big Bird looked like she was about to follow Medium Bird to birdie heaven any moment soon, we got her a new partner who looks exactly like Medium Bird: yellow, with a red face. He seems very game, is now currently exploring the cage and the branches; hasn’t discovered the swing yet.

The moment he came out of the box and started chirping, Big Bird came alive. She is now giving him a tour and showing him how cool the branches are and what stunts you could do with them. I checked in on them when they suddenly went silent, worried someone might have died again. But nothing to fear: when they aren’t chirping, that only means they’re necking.

We’ll call him New Bird from now on.

Change

I shouldn’t care because it doesn’t affect me (that’s what I like to think), but I do have an opinion about the US elections. I like Obama. There’s this charisma he exudes when he speaks. Like change is just round the corner, like hope is floating all around him, and if you come close enough you’ll catch some of it. It makes you feel, I  don’t want to miss it when it happens. Whatever it is.

So anyway, I like Obama. I think it will do the US some good to be on its toes for a while, not knowing quite what to expect. That’s what change does, doesn’t it?

Not to say I don’t like McCain. I think he’s handsome. Showing the world those clips from his POW cell in Vietnam some eons ago was pure TV magic. It was like watching a movie star with that old-time glamour. And he is definitely a gentleman. When he conceded, his speech(writer) was wonderful, gracious.

I don’t like Palin, and I don’t know Biden. I like Tina Fey though

Cheers for change!

Printed page

Today, when so many things are digital and electronic, I think the printed word becomes more sacred, not obsolete. I don’t agree with the prophets of doom–the book will not be taken over by the likes of Kindle. (I’d still like to try Kindle, though)

My eyes have to constantly adjust to the screen, whether TV, computer, laptop, or palm. I like the convenience–I type fast, so writing on anything with a keyboard is convenient. But my medium of choice for writing will always be paper and pen. There’s something about crossing out words and adding notes in the margins. It excites me.

I wonder what thoughts I’ll pour out today, and which ones I’ll filter, and which ones I’ll primp and upgrade, until I get to that final copy which will look neat and spiffy on my computer screen.

Sniffly or sleepy?

I can’t imagine a worse couple of weeks for me. It seems every morning my rhinitis is attacking with otherworldly vigor. I sniffle and sneeze all the way through my commute to work, and hack away some more during the morning, with that unshakeable haze of stuffiness in my head. Must be the shifting seasons. Or, I should say, the confused shifting seasons. Nobody seems to know what season it is–rainy, sunny, or ber season (yes, according to me, those are our three official seasons).

I haven’t taken antihistimine for a while. I haven’t needed it in a long time. But now, I find myself scrounging for my chlorphenamine maleates and loratidines. The other day I popped one and it worked like a charm–but I ended up unable to work. My whole world cleared just like that, but I had to take a nap and shake the sleepiness off. It seems I now succumb to the side effects of antihistimine (which is: it knocks you out).

So this morning I have a choice: stay sniffly or risk being sleepy? I have a lot to write, so I think I have to stay awake. But staying awake with rhinitis is really only being half awake. Maybe I should stir an antihistimine into my cup of coffee.

The good news: my mug and other things

It’s tea time. Which reminds me of my mug.

This morning I washed my white mug, which has brown stains at the pit and a brown bottom-lip mark thanks to a year’s worth of coffee and tea. These stains have been there forever, and I figured it was just how mugs get old and the reason why people keep giving me mugs as Christmas gifts–you know, like the natural order of things.

So I washed my mug as nonchalantly as if it were just any other day, and ho-hum, ended up trying something absolutely revolutionary. I used the rough part of the sponge to scrub my mug. After a couple of swipes I rinsed it, and the brown stains were gone!

Why didn’t anyone ever tell me about the rough part of the sponge? I felt like someone, somewhere, withheld some really mind-blowing, life-altering news. And now that I know, how can I withhold it from you? You might be suffering from a stained mug, too, so I’m sharing the good news–two, actually–that will set you utterly free, as it did me.

First, the rough part of the sponge is extremely useful for removing stains. Second, Christ removes stains.

Oddly

Oddly my (regular) lovebirds are at war. At breakfast, the white one always finds a way to dominate the seed bowl, pecking off the blue one’s miserable attempts at a decent meal. Whitey is now getting fat, while Bluey remains slightly starved. I’ve changed their bowl into a bigger one to accomodate both warbirds at the same time.

Meanwhile, the African lovebirds look at them like they are the weirdest birds on the planet.