A Mindful Life

Wow! It so happens that my submission for “Discovery” was chosen as the Pick of the Week over at Illustration Friday. How neat! There’s an image on the front page — it changes weekly.

This week’s theme is “Poem.” I’ll ponder that one.

I’m especially pleased that I was selected to read and review an advance copy of first novel Gifted: A Novel, by Nikita Lalwani. It was my first choice of all the books offered. You see, LibraryThing has created an Early Reviewers group in conjunction with Random House. How can I say no to a free [...]

Remember I wrote that it never rains in the summer here? I ought to know better than to use an absolute. From the San Jose Mercury News:
In more than 70 years of record-keeping, it has never rained in San Jose on July 18.
Expect that streak to keep going.
Rain did fall as far south as [...]

Yup, it’s a belly.

There’s something comforting about coloring. I wanted to do something creative but had no ambition for unstructured play on the weekend. I also was thinking about making a “focal point” to focus on during labor. I pulled out the Peace Mandala Coloring Book and began with the flower manadala (at the bottom). It was pretty, [...]

Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.
–Isaac Newton

Discovery / 7 x 10″ sketch paper with colored marker
The discovery aspect of this is that I had fun discovering shapes and color combinations. I saw a tapestry hanging in a local Peet’s that inspired me to draw this. Since I hadn’t drawn much in a long time, I’d forgotten how relaxing this is. I [...]

This post has been updated; see below for new information.
Liora is a blogging friend of mine. Recently she discovered a lump in her breast; the biopsy indicated it was cancer. This post describes just how aggressive the cancer is. The news is not good. To make matters worse, she’s had a hell of a time [...]

Meet Raoul! (Hey, we were on vacation, feeling silly, so yeah, we gave names to stuff we liked.)

It’s been a rather sober week so far. It’s not that I’m superstitious and worry that talking about mortality will somehow invite it. It’s just that…
Monday involved a long discussion about life insurance and how to start a savings program for our daughter’s college education someday. The insurance part involves discussion of how much one’s [...]