There it is, Plain as Daylight

My mother posted this quote on Facebook today: “There is a thought in your mind right now. The longer you hold on to it, the more you dwell upon it, the more life you give to that thought. Give it enough life, and it will become real. So make sure the thought is indeed a great one.” The quote is apparently credited to “daily motivator” Ralph Marston, which sounds cheesy, but I’ll admit it’s motivated me. With this quote in mind, I’ll share the overwhelming thought I had this morning as I trudged out of bed in the dark to get ready for work.

When I think about what I want most in life, something that comes to mind always is a life without alarm clocks. What I mean by that really, of course, is a life without the need to be at a specific place at a specific time every day. Continue Reading »

I guess we all have our crosses to bear in life, but mine seems to be this: freaky technical/administrative glitches that turn something that works *effortlessly* for other people into an anxiety nightmare for me. Example: my birthdate, which is listed correctly on both my birth certificate and marriage license, but was entered incorrectly by someone at the social security office when I got married and changed my name–a problem caused on *their* end–which they refuse to fix unless I take those documents (the same ones they were sent when I applied for a new card) in person to the social security office somewhere in Springfield.

The most recent example of this is my newly acquired library card. Yes, I’m embarrassed to say, I *just* got a library card here in town, though I’ve lived here since late 2000. I applied for my card one evening a month or so ago without a hitch, but when I tried later to create a login for the library system’s online reservation service, it did not recognize my card number. Continue Reading »

It wouldn’t be quite right to say that I have the Holiday Blues. I don’t feel quite “blue”… closer to “meh.” So I suppose I have the Holiday Mehs. Work is overwhelming right now, to the point where I have had to cancel most of my vacation days over the next two weeks just to get things done, so I’m missing that giddy vacation feeling. Meanwhile, with so much uncertainty in our lives right now, we decided not to have a Christmas tree this year, so it’s easy to forget that the holidays are even happening. Continue Reading »

One of the anime series currently available for viewing on Crunchyroll is La Corda d’Oro, based on the manga series licensed in the US by Viz (which is, I understand, based on a video game). My husband brought it up to me recently as a series he’d be interested in watching and when he told me the name, my ears perked up as I reached excitedly into my pile of review copies where I have volume ten of the manga waiting to be reviewed for Manga Recon’s “On The Shojo Beat” column next month. Seeing this as a great opportunity for me to study up for my review (I don’t own or have access to the first nine volumes of the manga), we plunged right in.

Now I’ll say right off, I am really enjoying this anime series. Sure, the musical selections are straight out of someone’s supermarket CD of “Your Favorite Classical Music Hits,” but honestly this is what I expect to see in popular fiction, and even when the arrangements of these overused standards are utterly ridiculous (I looked it up–there actually is an existing arrangement of Pachelbel’s Canon for just violin and piano, as ill-advised as that may seem) the characters are so sincere about playing them it’s hard to remain snobbish about it, even for a stodgy old music geek like me. Recently, however, there has been a bit of a plot twist that has seriously thrown me for a loop. I found my own reaction to it surprising, revealing, and actually a little bit hilarious so I thought I’d talk about it here. Major spoilers after the jump. Continue Reading »