Same Kind of Different as Me is a great book! The book tells the stories of two men who become unlikely best friends - a wealthy art dealer and a homeless man. As I'm sure anyone who has ever provided any charitable service knows, many times the people you are serving turn out to bless you more than could have imagined, and definitely more than you'd expect. That is definitely the case in this story, as the homeless man shares his outlook on life and wisdom he has gained through his tough breaks in life.
The book also tells a different version of the homeless person's story - one you don't get from driving down an inner city street or watching the news. Often we think that the homeless are responsible for the situations they are in, and surely everyone makes choices that impact their destiny, but some people are definitely dealt a bad hand coming into this life.
Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:
"I know it ain't non of my business, but does you own somethin that each one of them keys fits?" I glanced at the keys; there were about ten of them. "I suppose," I replied, not really ever having thought about it. "Are you sure you own them, or does they own you?"
"There's somethin I learned when I was homeless: Our limitation is God's opportunity. When you get all the way to the end of your rope and there ain't nothin you can do, that's when God takes over." (This one reminds me of being in Africa. On those trips you frequently get so far out of your comfort zone, and that is just when you see what God can do. It also makes sense out of the counter-intuitive "For when I am weak, then I am strong" of 2 Cor 12:10.)
"You was the onlyest person that looked past my skin and past my meanness and saw that there was somebody on the inside worth savin. I don't know how, but you knowed that most a' the time when I acted like a bad fella, it was just so folks wouldn't get too close. I didn't want nobody close to me. It wadn't worth the trouble... You stood up with courage and faced me when I was dangerous, and it changed my life. You loved me for who I was on the inside, the person God meant for me to be, the one that had just gotten lost for a while on some ugly roads in life."
"I used to spend a lotta time worryin that I was different from other people, even from other homeless folks. Then, after I met Miss Debbie and Mr. Ron, I worried that I was so different from them that we wadn't ever gon' have no kind a' future. But I found out everybody's different - the same kind of different as me. We're all just regular folks walkin down the road God done set in front of us."
The whole book also reminded me of how to really make a difference (in the life of a friend, people you're working with through a charity, people at work, whoever, wherever), you have to get out of your comfort zone and get into people's lives. It's really easy to hand out some money or some food, and those things shouldn't be overlooked because people need the basics to survive and have a sense of dignity before they can even begin to move forward in their lives. But people's lives are where changes are made, and people are messy. You gotta get in a get dirty to have a big impact, but it sure isn't easy.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
Book Review: My Life in France
My Life in France is an autobiography by Julia Child mostly, as the title would indicate, about the time she and her husband spent in France after the Second World War. Before going to France, Julia and her husband Paul had recently gotten married after they met working for the US government in Asia during the war (Julia Child was actually a spy! But that didn't come out until Fall 2008 when the CIA released their old records.)
Julia didn't know how to cook at all when she married Paul and moved to France, and immediately upon arriving on French soil, she fell in love with her first French meal. After that, she took to the kitchen and enrolled at the Cordon Bleu. From the start, Julia took her cooking very seriously, yet she still had fun with it.
What I loved most about the book was Julia's passion for cooking and enjoying life. She definitely had a stop-and-smell-the-roses type of attitude about their time in France. She tried all sorts of new food items and learned how to make them and even improve upon some. Once she took up cooking and cook book writing, she was so passionate about inspiring others, making sure they had fun, and getting every last detail in the cookbook right. She would try recipes 20 or more times to make sure every detail and explanation was accurately captured! Now that's dedication!
The book made me want to slow down a bit and enjoy my surroundings, whatever they may be. It made me really glad that we have a St Louis to-do list (all of fun things) and that we're slowly ticking each one off the list!
Julia didn't know how to cook at all when she married Paul and moved to France, and immediately upon arriving on French soil, she fell in love with her first French meal. After that, she took to the kitchen and enrolled at the Cordon Bleu. From the start, Julia took her cooking very seriously, yet she still had fun with it.
What I loved most about the book was Julia's passion for cooking and enjoying life. She definitely had a stop-and-smell-the-roses type of attitude about their time in France. She tried all sorts of new food items and learned how to make them and even improve upon some. Once she took up cooking and cook book writing, she was so passionate about inspiring others, making sure they had fun, and getting every last detail in the cookbook right. She would try recipes 20 or more times to make sure every detail and explanation was accurately captured! Now that's dedication!
The book made me want to slow down a bit and enjoy my surroundings, whatever they may be. It made me really glad that we have a St Louis to-do list (all of fun things) and that we're slowly ticking each one off the list!
Friday, March 20, 2009
Conversation Snippets
I meant to post this a while ago but forgot and just found it saved in my drafts. Below are some random conversation snippets I took totally out of context one day.
you are the only person who will get that random comment
a couple people know that i type PITA instead of pain in the ass
but you are the only one who knows it's because of a fake indian
and then didn't want to have fun naked time when i showed up adorably inebriated at his hotel
you are the only person who will get that random comment
a couple people know that i type PITA instead of pain in the ass
but you are the only one who knows it's because of a fake indian
and then didn't want to have fun naked time when i showed up adorably inebriated at his hotel
move to a different city with me?
sure, i have to live somewhere
welcome to our little blogging family
u should be on this call... i feel like im watching clueless
it is like you are a truck driver! they only get sunburnt on their left arm by the window
doesn't she know that guys are on the lookout for girls at weddings!?
i am writing the most rambly blog right now
YES! Those are the best kind
YES! Those are the best kind
this is the kind of blog i keep typing and it gets more and more rambly as i go and then i end up deleting it
you are too much of a profectionist - just post it! It is a blog... just one level of gramar above AIM
The first picture is her yelling at me because I was wearing black socks with brown shoes... I said "wait, wait, I want to get a picture of you bitching at me"
her boyfriend... or "the drug dealer"
did you just admit to reading the twlight series?
shut up! you watch the bachelor!
they thought it was really funny to hear the white prissy girl getting off the elevator say dick
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Book Review: Julie and Julia
In Julie and Julia, Julie cooks her way through every recipe in Julia's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days. Julie is from Austin but living in The City with her husband, in a dead end temp job that turned into a permanent job. The book is laugh-out-loud funny, and some of my favorite parts is where Julie yells and cusses at Julia about her commentary on "easy" recipes in MtAoFC.
I love Julie's relationship with her husband and how he encourages her in her crazy, random goal and even helps her cook through the recipes. He knows when she is on a rampage and he needs to duck out of the way and he knows when she needs to be calmed or helped. (Sad that they are now divorced, but that happened post-book. :() OMG Their kitchen sounds so gross, especially since they are constantly feeding friends and even TV crews out of it... the part where Julie found the maggots under the dish rack made me almost nauseous and reminded me of other vivid scenes of maggots (The Dante Club definitely takes the cake - I literally felt sick to my stomach and had to put the book down; the CSI: Miami episode where maggots from a dead body in a condo come through the light fixture to the condo below takes second place).
Throughout Julie's cooking project, she blogs about her trials and tribulations and gains a wide-spread reader base (hence the book deal later). She has regular readers who become a part of her life and are very worried about her if she takes short breaks from her blogging. Her mother reads her blog and at first is very concerned and tries to convince her to stop the Julie/Julia Project. By the end of The Project however, her mother comes around. One of my favorite parts of the book is when Julie goes home to Austin and cooks for family and friends and notes that even her Texan mother was appalled at the amount of butter she was cooking with. LOL Totally like my Texan family... seriously, the only thing you can ever count on finding in their fridge is butter, multiple tubs of butter.
By the end of the Julie/Julia Project, Julie is still in her dead end job, but has found a sense of passion and purpose in her life. (And gets a book deal!) This book made me want to try some more adventurous recipes in the kitchen instead of my usual easy faves... and it probably helped that I was reading this when we tackled the Pupcake Project in Florida!
I love Julie's relationship with her husband and how he encourages her in her crazy, random goal and even helps her cook through the recipes. He knows when she is on a rampage and he needs to duck out of the way and he knows when she needs to be calmed or helped. (Sad that they are now divorced, but that happened post-book. :() OMG Their kitchen sounds so gross, especially since they are constantly feeding friends and even TV crews out of it... the part where Julie found the maggots under the dish rack made me almost nauseous and reminded me of other vivid scenes of maggots (The Dante Club definitely takes the cake - I literally felt sick to my stomach and had to put the book down; the CSI: Miami episode where maggots from a dead body in a condo come through the light fixture to the condo below takes second place).
Throughout Julie's cooking project, she blogs about her trials and tribulations and gains a wide-spread reader base (hence the book deal later). She has regular readers who become a part of her life and are very worried about her if she takes short breaks from her blogging. Her mother reads her blog and at first is very concerned and tries to convince her to stop the Julie/Julia Project. By the end of The Project however, her mother comes around. One of my favorite parts of the book is when Julie goes home to Austin and cooks for family and friends and notes that even her Texan mother was appalled at the amount of butter she was cooking with. LOL Totally like my Texan family... seriously, the only thing you can ever count on finding in their fridge is butter, multiple tubs of butter.
By the end of the Julie/Julia Project, Julie is still in her dead end job, but has found a sense of passion and purpose in her life. (And gets a book deal!) This book made me want to try some more adventurous recipes in the kitchen instead of my usual easy faves... and it probably helped that I was reading this when we tackled the Pupcake Project in Florida!
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Letter to AIG Execs
Dear AIG Executives,
I hate your stinking guts.
You make me vomit.
You're scum between my toes!
Love,
Tera
Name that movie!
I hate your stinking guts.
You make me vomit.
You're scum between my toes!
Love,
Tera
Name that movie!
Running in the Dark
I know, I know... I shouldn't run in the dark. (But you also shouldn't run on a stomach full of Swedish Fish and that didn't stop me either.) But last night I got home from work and put my running clothes on and sat down for a second and the sun went down way faster than I expected. And it wasn't totally dark when I headed out. And running in the dark was kinda awesome! I ran by one house that totally smelled like pot; I'm not even kidding! But according to The Economist, 5% of the adult population of the world takes illegal drugs (same percentage as a decade ago btw), and I ran by way more than 20 houses, so really I should have expected to smell more weed, right?
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
I stole it from
I like updating my Facebook status with things like "stupid St Louis" or "sucky gloomy weather" or "I hate this city"... somehow griping to the world makes me feel better about it. But now I'm friends with a client and a local team member on Facebook so I can't publish those things anymore. So for those of you now in the know, just assume that 10 days of every month I am thinking those things.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Client Analogies
One of the main clients I work with loooooooooves analogies. And she comes up with really good ones too. The funny thing about working for her for almost 4 years is that they start to repeat themselves in totally different contexts (still making a lot of sense though). My absolute favorite of her analogies is relating to what the IT group of my client company actually delivers when compared to what was scoped for a project (woah, did I just totally IT-consultant-nerd-out on you with all those words in one sentence?!). One of the systems that IT built had it's first birthday not too long ago, and my client decided to get them a birthday cake. What she wanted to get them was a box of cake mix, but she decided to be nice instead. The reason being that working with IT and asking them to build you something is like if you went to a bakery and ordered AND PAID FOR this:
And then 7 months after the agreed upon date, what they hand to you over the counter is this:
It's funny cuz it's true.
This is when you laugh and say, thank God I'm not an employee of this place.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Airline Confusion
I almost always fly American Airlines, so imagine my confusion when I woke up from a nap yesterday evening on the plane to see this:
Not sure if you can make out that logo from the stealthily and quickly snapped photo of the beverage cart locker in the flight attendant's little kitchenette (I didn't want anyone to notice I was taking the picture, because well, who does that?), but that is the Continental Airlines logo.
.......?
Yeah, I was confused. I was pretty sure I had boarded an American Airlines plane. In fact, here is a picture of my boarding pass:
That is an American Airlines logo in the corner. I guess either the plane had been bought and sold or parts traded around... but I was still confused.
Not sure if you can make out that logo from the stealthily and quickly snapped photo of the beverage cart locker in the flight attendant's little kitchenette (I didn't want anyone to notice I was taking the picture, because well, who does that?), but that is the Continental Airlines logo........?
Yeah, I was confused. I was pretty sure I had boarded an American Airlines plane. In fact, here is a picture of my boarding pass:
That is an American Airlines logo in the corner. I guess either the plane had been bought and sold or parts traded around... but I was still confused.
Travel Is Annoying
On Thursday of last week, I flew from St Louis to Dallas to Jacksonville. Connecting through Dallas always seems like a huge PITA (yes, the indian) since I live there. This is one of the main reasons I have not yet moved to Austin. Anyway, I had all carry on luggage - I had even crammed the baby Elmo doll for Cordelia (in the box still!) into my carry on bag. My bag fit just fine on the MD80 that I flew on from STL to DFW. Twenty minutes and a mad search for food after my my flight landed in DFW, I boarded the flight to JAX. Another MD80. (American Airlines loooooves MD80s... remember when they pulled a bunch out of circulation several months back? I was in LA. That was a fun day.) As I'm boarding the gate agent says, "Ma'am, your bag looks like it is too full to fit in the overhead bin." And I said, "I just came off a plane and it fit fine." And she says, "Well ma'am, I understand that; a lot of people just came in off other planes, but this flight is very full." And I replied, "Does that change the overhead bin size?" Seriously. I know I'm a bitch sometimes, but really?!?! Pretty sure that if my bag fit in an MD80 20 minutes ago, it will fit again, regardless of how many people get on the plane... unless of course the PEOPLE are planning to be in the overhead bins, and that has got to violate all sorts of FAA regulations. If I can't wait in line for the toilet, you certainly can't climb into the overhead bin. So instead of getting in a huge fight with the gate agent and getting carted off by TSA (my favorite governmental organization), I complied with her wishes that I take stuff out of the front pocket. Immediately after getting in the jet way though, I stuffed it all back in! And guess what?! It fit in the damn overhead bin.
PS. My stop cussing resolution is not going so well.
PS. My stop cussing resolution is not going so well.
Weekend in Review
This weekend I went to Jacksonville to hang out with Amy and her family. It was a really fun, relaxing trip.
It didn't start off so relaxing though. Amy always has great baking ambitions, and wouldn't you know, they would be even higher for her neice's 2nd birthday, which we were celebrating with her family on Saturday. Amy decided we were making Pupcakes.
Now, I don't even like decorating cookies. I don't even like icing things. My favorite cookies are oatmeal (no icing) and my favorite cake to make is a butterscotch one that has chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, and nuts on top - no icing! Icing just seems like a pain. And if you do it too quickly after the cake comes out of the oven, the cake crumbles and gets all stuck in the icing. And Lord knows, I am not one gifted with patience! ;) So icing in general = pain. Icing in designs, or writing, or intricate details seems like about the most stressful thing that could be done. I did not come from a family that decorated Christmas cookies or had icing on hand in the kitchen. I don't think I learned to make icing until I was about 24. I don't recall ever using food coloring growing up, yet we always seemed to have it in the pantry, so it must have been used at least once. Recently, I wrote simple words on some special-bachelorette-party-shaped cakes for a friend's bachelorette party and I had to have Amy help me and convince me that maybe, just maybe, I too could force the icing to do my bidding and come out of the special little v-shaped bag with the right thickness and speed.
Anyway, so back to Friday - Amy decided to make Pupcakes for her niece's birthday because her niece loves puppies. So there I am, hanging around the kitchen with Amy and her mom and they are hard at work on Pupcake #1 - a dalmation. Amy spends probably about 45 minutes on the thing, while her mom rolls out starbursts to make the tongue and helps out in some other ways. I'm nervously keeping my distance, anxiety rising over the thought of icing desserts. Amy completes the dalmation, and her mom is taking pictures - documenting the process, and now documenting the first completed work of art. I turn my attention for a second, and then I hear shrieking. I turn back to the kitchen, and the dalmation has died! Crashed to the floor during its photo shoot! Forty-five minutes and a perfect puppy tragically lost!
This is my EXACT fear with icing things - they are so fragile! Cut out cookies... seriously? Half of the damn things break when you pick them up to just start icing them!
After we all recovered from the tragic loss of puppy #1, the pupcake creation went on without a hitch. We ended up making 11 pupcakes (not counting the one that died), see picture above! They turned out to be very cute, and Amy's niece LOVED them. I even made 3 chihuahuas and 1 dachshund! They by far the easiest ones, which is why I mustered the courage to attempt them. And they turned out alright! I left the more complicated ones to Amy, but I think now my sense of icing adventures has been bolstered, and I might even attempt a cute, well-decorated baking project in the future!
The rest of the weekend was fortunately not as dramatic. ;) We enjoyed the awesome, sunny, warm Florida weather. We even got some color while not even being outside for too long (my left arm still resembles a lobster and is now under a wool sweater - not comfortable!). I got to meet Amy's brothers, which was really fun. After leaving at the end of the weekend, I felt like I'd known them a lot longer than just a couple of days. We also had lots of good food and good wine, pretty much my favorite things. :)
It didn't start off so relaxing though. Amy always has great baking ambitions, and wouldn't you know, they would be even higher for her neice's 2nd birthday, which we were celebrating with her family on Saturday. Amy decided we were making Pupcakes.
Now, I don't even like decorating cookies. I don't even like icing things. My favorite cookies are oatmeal (no icing) and my favorite cake to make is a butterscotch one that has chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, and nuts on top - no icing! Icing just seems like a pain. And if you do it too quickly after the cake comes out of the oven, the cake crumbles and gets all stuck in the icing. And Lord knows, I am not one gifted with patience! ;) So icing in general = pain. Icing in designs, or writing, or intricate details seems like about the most stressful thing that could be done. I did not come from a family that decorated Christmas cookies or had icing on hand in the kitchen. I don't think I learned to make icing until I was about 24. I don't recall ever using food coloring growing up, yet we always seemed to have it in the pantry, so it must have been used at least once. Recently, I wrote simple words on some special-bachelorette-party-shaped cakes for a friend's bachelorette party and I had to have Amy help me and convince me that maybe, just maybe, I too could force the icing to do my bidding and come out of the special little v-shaped bag with the right thickness and speed.
Anyway, so back to Friday - Amy decided to make Pupcakes for her niece's birthday because her niece loves puppies. So there I am, hanging around the kitchen with Amy and her mom and they are hard at work on Pupcake #1 - a dalmation. Amy spends probably about 45 minutes on the thing, while her mom rolls out starbursts to make the tongue and helps out in some other ways. I'm nervously keeping my distance, anxiety rising over the thought of icing desserts. Amy completes the dalmation, and her mom is taking pictures - documenting the process, and now documenting the first completed work of art. I turn my attention for a second, and then I hear shrieking. I turn back to the kitchen, and the dalmation has died! Crashed to the floor during its photo shoot! Forty-five minutes and a perfect puppy tragically lost!
This is my EXACT fear with icing things - they are so fragile! Cut out cookies... seriously? Half of the damn things break when you pick them up to just start icing them!
After we all recovered from the tragic loss of puppy #1, the pupcake creation went on without a hitch. We ended up making 11 pupcakes (not counting the one that died), see picture above! They turned out to be very cute, and Amy's niece LOVED them. I even made 3 chihuahuas and 1 dachshund! They by far the easiest ones, which is why I mustered the courage to attempt them. And they turned out alright! I left the more complicated ones to Amy, but I think now my sense of icing adventures has been bolstered, and I might even attempt a cute, well-decorated baking project in the future!
The rest of the weekend was fortunately not as dramatic. ;) We enjoyed the awesome, sunny, warm Florida weather. We even got some color while not even being outside for too long (my left arm still resembles a lobster and is now under a wool sweater - not comfortable!). I got to meet Amy's brothers, which was really fun. After leaving at the end of the weekend, I felt like I'd known them a lot longer than just a couple of days. We also had lots of good food and good wine, pretty much my favorite things. :)
Thursday, March 5, 2009
I'm Excited!
I can't wait for upper 70 degree weather and SUNSHINE for THREE days STRAIGHT! Jacksonville... here I come!!! ...In a few hours anyway...
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