I had a pretty good weekend, despite the fact that I have been in a bit of a funk lately. I know the various reasons for this: me being lazy, feelings of inadequacy at work. It all comes down to that.

So friday I was totally selfish and showed up late to dinner with an excuse of manicure going over its alotted time. I feel so much better, however, now that the claws have been removed. I was starting to get a little Howard Hughes-ey there. Dinner, by the way, was a lovely event with people I get to see far too little of. I can't remember if I've been to a Cuban restaurant before but everything we had was very yummy. (Specifically we went to Cuba de Ayer in Burtonsville.)

When we got home, we played WoW.

Saturday I did a bunch of driving. First to drum lesson (new assignment: White Wedding!!!) then out to Leesburg to exchange my christmas present. So I finally after months of desiring have a fancy new watch. It's the basic Seiko Coutura and it was marked down to like half price because of some minor cosmetic blemish or other. Bah! It works great. No, it's not a perpetual motion one but come to find out they don't even make those in ladies' anymore because ladies apparently won't wear a watch that big. "Friggin' ladies", I believe, were my exact words to the salesperson.

I got back in time from the wilds of outletty Virginia to play some WoW, and then attend a showing of Juno at the greenbelt theater. Yes, it was as good as everyone said. Periodically it walked up to the "Too Twee" line and poked its nose over, but then sauntered back away to less annoying ground. Lots of belly laughs, however, and lots of J.K. Simmons. Sweet. After this we hit the diner.

When we got home, we played WoW.

Sunday I got up and managed to convince my butt to put in some laundry. I got ready and was just in time for my Buddhist anger management class. It was a much bigger crowd this time but the same adorable soft-spoken teacher taught the first part of the thing. By about halfway through, I was despairing as to whether there was any hope for me to let go, but by the end I had managed some helpful thoughts for eliminating bad mental habits. There was a helpful image early on about how going through life angry, rejecting all the things that happen that you cannot control is like driving with the emergency brake on. You have that moment where you ask yourself, "why is driving so hard?" before you release the brake. That is exactly what being angry is like, only we forget sometimes that we actually do have our hand on the brake lever. Next session is anxiety, in April, and BOY HOWDY do I look forward to that.

When I got home, we played even more WoW( digression about WoW )

Earlier this week I made the transition from my Timbuk 2 bag to my new and very beloved and fresh and happy Sherpani Vida. I sort of not really documented how everything fits in here and here and display how it looks on here and despair for its gross marketing here. So far you could consider its only downside to be the total ineffectuality of the drawstring, except that it has a flap and is no less secure than my T2 bag so I don't care. The lining inside is light and makes things easy to find, it makes all my heavy crap sit better on my shoulders, and it has 4 little external pockets for my 4 essentials: phone, ipod, camera, wallet. And the magnets make it so it doesn't stick to all other fabrics like velcro.

Remember when I used to do frozen meal reviews? Well here's another one:



Amy's Bowls Pesto Tortellini was actually quite tasty and probably no good for you. It didn't look colorless and unappealing before cooking, and it looks just about like it should after. There was no dearth of filling to the tortellini. I guess it would be hard to mess up tortellini and pesto sauce, but you can't be sure with the frozen foods industry. For 430 calories and 3 bucks, it's not a bad buy even for the health conscious and it filled me right up. It even had a reasonable amount of fiber. Another upshot of this review: now that I know there is such a thing as the heateatreview and that it has already covered the ground I care about, maybe I won't bother with this again!

And here is your obligatory cat picture:



WHO IS PRECIOUS AND FLIRTY MEOW MEOW

This not being able to print different sample messages from XMLSpy is really, really chapping my cookies.

However! My cookies can only get so chapped because I went to a lovely meditation seminar this weekend and learned alot about how the storm can fill up the sky, but does not break it. I found the lessons to be very helpful, particularly in regards to work which I think wasn't even the intention. The first teacher (who looked SO MUCH LIKE crafting_change it was eerie) explained a scenario in which more work is piled on you because of other people's vacations, and how you can then approach that work with resentment and a pre-set unwillingness to do the work (it seems obvious, but the way she expressed it was like a little light bulb going off in my head) which while not immediately applicable to me (I don't know enough yet to really DO a whole lot of work) is certainly something I used to enact in my head on a nearly daily basis. The experience in general left me wanting to ask a whole lot of questions about the actual formalities of this particular school itself; there was an altar-type thing, and I *still* don't really understand too much about whether there are rules, and what makes some people decide to be monks as opposed to just practicing. An amusing footnote: I thought to myself beforehand, "Self, you should not wear a watch to the meditation seminar. How uncool would it be to be checking the time? Just live in that moment, aware." And wouldn't you know that both monks who spoke to us? Wore watches and checked them regularly. HA! See how much I know.

I also attended two different Christmas tree trimmings, which were fantastic and made me feel very much more in the spirit of the season. Click on through to see the photos!



Oh! And Saturday night we went out to On The Border and had a really, really good meal and I am officially completely converted into someone who likes guacamole. Jeez, what's next? Asparagus??? After dinner I dragged Jack through Loehmann's and he bought me a bottle of RL's Polo Blue. Notes: "The following notes are combined to create this cool, yet warm & spicy fragrance: aquatic accords, spicy basil, verbena, clary sage, washed suede, velvety moss, and sheer musk." It's SO perfect for me for winter right now. I wish I could reapply... I think I will go home and do just that. And yes, I still prefer men's cologne mom!!

Also: How is it that Christmas cookies can actually be kind of bad, but you crave them anyways because they are Christmas Cookies?

Tonight: Book Club Christmas Party!!!
Tomorrow: Final Exam!!!!

There is a meditation seminar Sunday on Finding Space in a Busy Life put on by the Maryland Kadampa Buddhist community. They have one in Baltimore and one in Annapolis, I opted for the Annapolis one because it's right near where I used to work so I know how to get there really well.

Just in case anyone wants to work on letting go of desire in this holiday season of getting giving. :) Yes, I understand the irony of posting that right after a post coveting Martin Levac's drum kit.

The other day I was finally getting into a book I got on Audible called Bodhisattva Mind which is a lecture by Pema Chodron on Shantideva's work. She came to a part about the Generosity (Dana) Paramita and it struck me so that I thought I would share it. I've tried to transcribe it but skipped some parts, so forgive me.

How they work with that outer situation. Most people who are in a seemingly outer situation like that become slaves of that situation and their poverty situation is completely in sync with a poverty mentality.
Some people are in that situation and they are free of that situation at the same time. And so we know stories about this, you have nothing, and you still give. And if you have nothing material to give and you give your time and energy.
Usually we are caught in our outer world. It is difficult to say where the mind leaves off and the outer environment comes in and the Buddhist teaching is that they are interrelated.

There is a story that is told in one of the sutras about the Buddha who... In India today there are many beggars and in the Buddha's time it was the same. So the story is about a woman who came to him asking for money and he could see that she was completely enslaved by her identity as being a poverty-stricken victim, that her mind, the poverty mind was so strong. He knew that no matter how much he could give her, no matter how much someone could change her outer circumstances, she would still be caught in that mind. This particular woman.

...

So he saw that with this woman her insatiable hunger could never be satisfied. And that's what he wanted to address. It would be easy for him to address her food or money but he wanted to addres her mind, to try to free her from this whole state that she was in altogether. So he said to her, I will give you and your family food for the rest of your lives. You can come to me as long as I am alive and my monks after I'm dead and we will always give you food, but only on one condition. And that is that when the food is given to you personally, you pause. And you don't just grab it right away, but you say the words:

"No thank you, I don't need this."

And then you pause, two minutes, three minutes, Just pause. And then we will give it to you. And then you can go on. But he wanted her to go through this process of dealing with her grasping, her craving, which he knew was the source of her misery. And the story goes that the woman was not able to do it. She was not able to, in the short run, to make that leap, because the seduction of just wanting the thing was so strong.

Now we all know what that feels like. It may not be around poverty, but it's like I was talking last night about gossiping, or rage, or negative mind, or jealousy, the seduction to go with it is so strong. And for this woman according to the sutra she just wanted the thing so much that she couldn't pause, she couldn't trust him that he would keep his word because the craving was so great. So he gave her food and gave it to her children as well, but she never went again, because out of embarrassment she never went back.

So this is really what Shantideva is saying here... overcoming the mind where there is never enough.
...
This is a really radical way of thinking.

Just the words "No thank you, I don't need this." made me go back and listen a few times.