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So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
The Profile Zanzibar Age. 39 Gender. Female Ethnicity. that of my father and his father before him Location Altadena, CA School. Other » More info. The Weather The World The Link To Zanzibar's Past
This is my page in the beloved art community that my sister got me into: Samarinda Extra points for people who know what Samarinda is. The Phases of the Moon Module CURRENT MOON Writings
Poetry The Tree and the Telephone Pole The Spider I Do Not Know Their Names The Mouse Blindness La Plante The Moon Today I am Young A Night Poem Celestial Wandering Siren of the Sea If I Were a Dragon To the Dreamers Leave the Sky The Honor of the Oyster Return From San Diego War My Study Defeat A Late Summer's Night Of Dragons and Men Erebus The Edge of the World The Race Dragon's Spirit The Snake's Terror Spirit Island Metaphysics Metaphysica Transponderae Metaphysics and the Middaymoon Of Adventures in Foreign Lands The Rogue Wave: The Unedited Version Adventures in the PRC Voyage of Discovery Drinking the Blood of Goats Ticket for a Phantom Bus Os peixes nadam o mar Three Villages Far Away The River Weser Children I Should Have Kidnapped, Part I Let's Get You Out of Those Clothes Radishes Three-Piece-Lawsuit If Underwear Could Speak Croc Hunter/Combat Wombat
My hero(s) Only My Favorite Baseball Player EVER Aw, Larry Walker, how I loved thee. The Schedule
M: Science and Exploration T: Cook a nice dinner W: PARKOUR! Th: Parties, movies, dinners F: Picnics, the Louvre S: Read books, go for walks, PARKOUR Su: Philosophy, Religion The Reading List
This list starts Summer 2006 A Crocodile on the Sandbank Looking Backwards Wild Swans Exodus 1984 Tales of the Alhambra (in progress) Dark Lord of Derkholm Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The Lost Years of Merlin Harry Potter a l'ecole des sorciers (in progress) Atlas Shrugged (in progress) Uglies Pretties Specials A Long Way Gone (story of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone- met the author! w00t!) The Eye of the World: Book One of the Wheel of Time From Magma to Tephra (in progress) Lady Chatterley's Lover Harry Potter 7 The No. 1 Lady's Detective Agency Introduction to Planetary Volcanism A Child Called "It" Pompeii Is Multi-Culturalism Bad for Women? Americans in Southeast Asia: Roots of Commitment (in progress) What's So Great About Christianity? Aeolian Geomorphology Aeolian Dust and Dust Deposits The City of Ember The People of Sparks Cube Route When I was in Cuba, I was a German Shepard Bound The Golden Compass Clan of the Cave Bear The 9/11 Commission Report (2nd time through, graphic novel format this time, ip) The Incredible Shrinking Man Twilight Eclipse New Moon Breaking Dawn Armageddon's Children The Elves of Cintra The Gypsy Morph Animorphs #23: The Pretender Animorphs #25: The Extreme Animorphs #26: The Attack Crucial Conversations A Journey to the Center of the Earth A Great and Terrible Beauty The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Dandelion Wine To Sir, With Love London Calling Watership Down The Invisible Alice in Wonderland Through the Looking Glass 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea The Host The Hunger Games Catching Fire Shadows and Strongholds The Jungle Book Beatrice and Virgil Infidel Neuromancer The Help Flip Zion Andrews The Unit Princess Quantum Brain The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks No One Ever Told Us We Were Defeated Delirium Memento Nora Robopocalypse The Name of the Wind The Terror Sister Tao Te Ching What Paul Meant Lao Tzu and Taoism Libyan Sands Sand and Sandstones Lost Christianites: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew The Science of God Calculating God Great Contemporaries, by Winston Churchill City of Bones Around the World in 80 Days, by Jules Verne Divergent Stranger in a Strange Land The Old Man and the Sea Flowers for Algernon Au Bonheur des Ogres The Martian The Road to Serfdom De La Terre � la Lune (ip) In the Light of What We Know Devil in the White City 2312 The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August Red Mars How to Be a Good Wife A Mote in God's Eye A Gentleman in Russia The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism Seneca: Letters from a Stoic | A Slice of Life Thursday. 5.12.16 12:13 am When I lived in Providence, Rhode Island, my apartment had a little backyard. In the backyard was a little tree with branches that grew like an umbrella. In the summer, bunches of white flowers bloomed, weighting down the branches. One year I planted a bunch of flowers in the harsh Providence soil. I traveled so much in those days that I didn't even see when they sprouted and bloomed. Our neighbors, a very young and impulsive couple, married themselves below our umbrella tree and wove my flowers in their hair. When I returned, the garden was empty.
It's a strange little life that I've made for myself here in California. My house sits in an eccentric little neighborhood with towering pines and leafy avocado trees. Occasional lemons, oranges, and stately palms give the place a tropical feel, especially this year, which has been heavy with rain. The clouds gather in misty splendor around the mountains and the arroyo has filled with saplings. When the leaves rustle, it's usually a lizard. I still find them to be quite novel after all this time. I have a job that I love. I tell people that all I have to do for the next 30 years is not get fired. It's weird to feel committed to a workplace like that, especially after so many years of moving around all the time. I guess it's kind of like marrying someone. JPL has its flaws, clearly visible and annoying, but I'd be content to let them annoy me for the next 30 years at least. JPL's redeeming qualities more than make up for these things. JPL's campus feels like a playground. Each building you enter contains something more amazing than the last: people driving a half a Mars rover over a circle of fake terrain... a house-sized robot in the shape of giant spider... tiny robots that can climb up walls like my garden lizards... real flight spacecraft in the process of being assembled. There are plenty of buildings I haven't explored yet. There is plenty of time for that. People more senior than I am are in the midst of filling our hallways with new hires. We have no voice in the hiring process. I wonder if the senior scientists, a few years from retirement, realize that they're hiring our friends for the next 30 years. It's a mistake to hire the best one, people always tell me. Hire the one who will get along with everyone else in the group. One superstar is great, but a team is greater. I still have a frequent urge to move away to a place where I can buy a house on a big plot of land and have five kids and let them run wild through the great outdoors. But how could I leave my job? How many people wake up in the morning with their heart a-leaping at the thought of getting to go to work that day? Maybe I can buy a little shack somewhere in Utah and we can spend the summers there. In the evenings my little dog Juan Pablo and I walk around the neighborhood, looking at the houses. When I arrived I'd looked at them despairingly-- tiny little shacks with prices in the high six figures-- it was criminal. Now I'm more discerning. This one is small, yes, but it has a beautiful Spanish balcony. This one has a large gazebo in the backyard. This one has a large, exposed front yard, but if I planted some hedges I could make a beautiful little private garden. There are always possibilities. My gym is close by. When I signed up I told the guy that I was going to attend the gym for one year. "Exactly one year?" he said, skeptically. "Not three months?" "A year," I said, annoyed. "Not more than a year?" he said. I smirked at him. "My desire is to go to the gym for exactly one year, not a day more nor a day less." He gave me my year-long membership. Now we are a little community of zumba-dancers, women about my age and considerably older, from every race on Earth. We look at each other with breathless despair between all of the fast songs, and that's what brings us together. I have habits now. After years of constant traveling, being gone at least one week out of each month, I've made an effort to be still for a while. Take classes. Host garden parties. Every weekend I have to wind my grandmother's old clock. Every morning I have to water my herb garden. I vacuum. I clean the counters. There is only me, so everything stays pretty clean. I am annoyed when someone moves something out of its place. This is new. I'll have to relax again a bit if I ever find myself a family. Sometimes, when I go out walking in the evening with Juan Pablo, I leave the door unlocked and all of the lights on, so I can pretend that we're not coming home to an empty home. Since it is summer, I've been playing softball in a league. Everyone is always surprised, but JPL not only has enough softball teams to fill a league, but enough to fill THREE leagues. We are the C league, the lowest league there is. One time I played for the B league, but they actually have strikes there. In fact, you only get two strikes before you're out. It's too serious there. I've never even met anyone who plays in A league. I like the C league because sometimes a stray child or dog runs on the field, and everyone has to chase it. Sometimes they put kids up to bat, and let them catch. Everyone's boyfriend who is in town for the week can play, and in the middle of summer we fill the team with interns. I can't remember how I got on the LA Radars, but I'll play for them for the next couple of decades, God willing. Maybe even after I retire. My house is a little two-bedroom rental in the backyard of a larger house. It has a picket fence around a little yard and patio. I have a deck for my herb garden that has the perfect amount of sun. Maybe at the end of the summer I'll have a tomato. I can walk to the library from my house. It doesn't have very many books, but it has enough of the basics to keep me busy. I'm in a book club, and I'm in town for most the meetings. What a novelty. My friends in France want me to come and visit them in France. My friends and colleagues want me to come to Iceland. Or Hawaii. Or Brazil. I just want to stay in Altadena, playing with Juan Pablo and watching my garden grow. Recommended by 2 Members 7 Comments. I feel like if you wrote a whole book about one day in your life, I would enjoy reading it. I could tell you what happened on April 26th, but I've pretty much only been telling people in person or over videochat, because text alone does not do it justice. » randomjunk on 2016-05-13 05:01:47 This entry just makes me feel happy. It's such a calming entry. I agree with RJ. You could basically write a book. I'd buy it, and read it over and over. » LostSoul13 on 2016-05-18 11:36:10 » The-Muffin-Man on 2016-06-04 10:21:22 » The-Muffin-Man on 2016-06-04 10:21:30 I've been trying to comment a heart but I think it's interpreting the angle bracket as HTML...so instead you get a smiley face :) » The-Muffin-Man on 2016-06-04 10:24:00 » Helena on 2016-06-04 11:25:42 Same as the muffin man. :) » Helena on 2016-06-04 11:25:59
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