I got a new fortune, which I must admit is better than "If it ain't broken, don't fix it." As far as fortunes go, it's actually pretty nice. Usually, I get weird ones that say, "When you walk into a room, the room just lights up." (I've never actually gotten this as a fortune, but they've been similar, and this phrase has come to be my pet peeve eulogy, by the way.) Anyway, that's a statement about personality, not a real fortune. Fortunes come in three types: 1) cliches or proverbs, 2) statements about personality (always good, by the way) and 3) actual fortunes. Plus, the ones that have winning lottery numbers. This most recent fortune is a good, true fortune, except that I already knew about this "great water-crossing" trip.
Being a logical person, I get my advice on the future solely from fortune cookies. Our family has a tradition that you can't hand a fortune cookie to another person, since touching a fortune cookie means that the fortune inside is meant for you. I will admit that it's only something we play at, but I like a good fortune all the same.
So I commend the company for writing a real fortune, but would anyone pay a psychic if she only produced commonly known knowledge (e.g. "Tomorrow will be Thursday")? I don't think so.
-MsLin
So milk doesn't, in fact, make you skinny. The "Got Milk?" people are pulling the "Milk your diet. Lose Weight!" ads after a bit of pressure from vegan groups, a petition from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, and the Federal Trade Commission. (see news story here: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=3162749) Don't those ads say something like "...with a sensible diet and regular exercise." Guess what? With a sensible diet and regular exercise, 1 oz. of chocolate every day will make you lose weight. Because the chocolate is like a placebo, as long as you believe it works, it works. But what really makes me mad, is that they had me choking milk down again thinking that it would help my weight loss regime.
I've hated milk for a long time. The first time I remember hating milk was in day care, when I was four. It was a rule that we had to drink a cup of milk with our lunch every day. I didn't like it, so my mom sent a cup of orange juice along one day, which I assumed could replace my milk at lunch. However, when lunch came, the "day care provider" said that I could only drink my juice after I drank my milk. So I gulped the milk really fast just to get rid of it. When she gave me the juice, I threw up.
Through all this time, I remember that it didn't occur to me that I didn't like milk. Afterall, everyone said, "Milk is good for you. It's healthy. Make sure you drink it." So, I guess even to myself, I was denying that it was even possible to dislike milk. I can handle chocolate milk, but I really prefer to stay away from it all together.
This brings me to the second time I remember not liking milk. My kindergarten teacher Mrs. B and I made a deal. You remember in school, or maybe you don't, that you had milk at lunch, and then one other time during the day in the afternoon. Before you could leave the lunch room, the monitor would pick up your milk carton to make sure it was empty. At our school we could have chocolate milk on Fridays, which was easier for me. I think I must've had some sort of break down (as much of a break down as a 5-yr-old can have) because I just remember crying and telling Mrs. B how much I hated milk, and I wished we didn't have to drink it all the time...or if we did have to drink it all the time then I wished we could have chocolate milk. Anyway, she said that as long as I could drink regular milk until Friday, then I could definitely have chocolate milk on Friday, every week. And that is kind of a reward for getting through the week with regular milk. I think this is reason for my diet strategy, which is "Friday is Free day," which means if you eat healthy all week, on Friday you can have something you are really craving, like an ice cream cone, or macaroni and cheese, etc.
I have determined that the issue I have with milk is mostly due to its strong yellow flavor. Yellow tastes or smells like something that came from a body: sweat, mucus, blood, snot, sometimes eggs. And, milk also comes from a body. There are also plant-based yellow flavor sources, the strongest of which are cilantro, dill, and ginkgo trees. However, yellow isn't always bad, it's just bad in milk and sickness, because I like cilantro. Bleach is also yellow.
I have identified my personal colors for occasionally unpleasant flavors and smells, and their corresponding, regular person examples. "Strong" means mostly unpleasant, (yellow is strong) and "mild" means mostly neutral:
brown (strong): mushrooms, wet dogs, leather, wood, new car smell, cigarette smoke, cooking beef, goat cheese
white (strong): chemicals, ammonia, illegal drugs
green (medium): grass, evergreen
blue (mild): rosemary, mint, basil, sage, fuzzy plants and peach skin
red/orange (strong): moulding produce, tomatoes, vomit, vinegar
-MsLin
There are times in life when you feel like things are coming full-circle, like when I went to camp and met "Josh," just before going to the University. He said that his brother was going to go to the same university for grad. school. I thought: Ok, I might meet "Sam" sometime, and I saw a guy who looked vaguely like Josh at church, but didn't really check anything out. Then, 6 yrs. later, I was at an end of the year party with my grad. school comrades. My colleague's wife, saw me standing chatting with my grad. school friend, and she said, "Let me introduce you to someone: That is Sam, his dad is a pastor..." I said his last name, and she made the introduction. So, it took six years, but it came to pass that I did, in fact, meet Josh's brother, even though it was at the very end of my University years.
There are a couple of "famous last words" that I remember from when I was a kid. The first one went something like this: I was in the car with my mom, and I said, "Mom, you know there are some people who don't eat meat?" She said, "Yeah, I know." I'm like, "I don't think I could ever do that." She goes, "Me neither." Probably 5 yrs. later, I went vegetarian.
Lately, I've been thinking that I never expected that I would 1) have a boyfriend, 2) be living in the Southwest and 3) be going to teach for a year in China. I don't really know what I expected, but not any of that stuff. In fact, many of the things I said I would do, haven't happened, and many of the things I said I would never do, have happened.
This brings me to a third point, which is that I have never liked my name. I sounds like someone throwing up. And I get a little offended when Dbf calls me by my name, since it sounds so serious when he does it. I remember another time with my mom: I said, "Mom, what's my name?" She's like, "It's Beth." I say, "Really? But I don't like it." "Well, maybe someday you will like it." "I don't think so...When I go to college, can I have people call me Joanne?" "When you go to college, you can go by whatever name you want." But there's a stigma attached to people who don't like their names. One of my grad. school colleagues had that problem. She wanted to go by her middle name, but she had to jump through hoops to get the University to give her an email address with her first initial instead of her first name, and getting her name to show up correctly on directories, etc., was just a hastle. (And I remember thinking, why is she making such a big deal about it, it kind of seems like nit picking, esp. when I met her family, and they all called her by her first name.) I'm now getting another situation in which I could change my name, but again it seems like too much of a hastle. When I go to China, I can use my Chinese name, which has a nice meaning, but for some reason it reminds me of diapers "Bei Fu." I actually, don't think I would be happy with any name. So I accept my name as a label, and it's not so bad because I'm probably the only one who thinks it sounds like someone puking.
-MsLin
I believe that it's impossible to determine the best movie moment ever. In order to figure out the best anything ever, one must first watch all of the possibilities. In movie terms, that's impossible, so the "best ever" is more likely the "most popular" moment of that type. So if I assert that one scene is the most romantic scene ever in a movie, the opposition must see my scene for a fair comparison.
I bring it up because once again I've been thinking about Merlin and the Sword. For me the most romantic scene in a movie ever does not involve Audry Hepburn or the like. It is in Merlin and the Sword, which is a rarely seen movie; in fact, so rare that it's not available on DVD.
Lancelot is played by Rupert Everett, and when he meets the queen, they talk in the garden. The queen tries to pick a rose, but she is cut by a thorn. Lancelot picks it for her, and she says"...but why didn't it [stick] you?" And he says, "It did." And she presses their hands together...
-MsLin
I got a new fortune, which I must admit is better than "If it ain't broken, don't fix it." As far as fortunes go, it's actually pretty nice. Usually, I get weird ones that say, "When you walk into a room, the room just lights up." (I've never actually gotten this as a fortune, but they've been similar, and this phrase has come to be my pet peeve eulogy, by the way.) Anyway, that's a statement about personality, not a real fortune. Fortunes come in three types: 1) cliches or proverbs, 2) statements about personality (always good, by the way) and 3) actual fortunes. Plus, the ones that have winning lottery numbers. This most recent fortune is a good, true fortune, except that I already knew about this "great water-crossing" trip.