King Cake

It's Mardi Gras time again and the king cake is flowing! If you don't
know, there is a plastic baby inside and whover gets the baby has to
buy the next king cake! Fun times had by all!

365 Day Project

As I mentioned before, Lucy posted a blog regarding the Shutter Sisters and their One Word Project. They also do another project, which is to post a photo a day for 365 days. I went searching, and many people are doing this. And I like it! So...even though there may be weeks where I am away from the computer and may have to do a few in a bunch, I think most of the time I can keep up with this. And I like to take pictures and always need more experience doing so. So, Lucy, sorry to copy you with this one, but it's such a fun thing!

Please check it out: My Eye on Things - A 365 day view on things, one day at a time.

I Need a Distraction

Word Play - First Word: Bored (donated by Ruth)

Bored: (wikipedia definition: Boredom is an emotional state experienced during periods lacking activity or when individuals are uninterested in the opportunities surrounding them. The first record of the word boredom is in the novel Bleak House by Charles Dickens, written in 1852,[1] in which it appears six times, although the expression to be a bore had been used in the sense of "to be tiresome or dull" since 1768.[2] )

I decided to make bored my first word, since part of the reason I am doing this project at all probably has something to do with boredom. Not that I am experiencing a “period lacking activity” nor am I “uninterested in the opportunities surrounding” me, but more that I am looking for something new to try. So, does that mean I AM “uninterested in the opportunities surrounding” me? Or am I just unaware of them? It could be that I am interested in ALL the activities surrounding me. It seems like the opportunities surrounding each of us are infinite; we only have to find them and attempt them. This project is an “opportunity surrounding me”. I just didn’t know it until I went looking for it.

The antonyms of boredom are “excitement, diversion and amusement” (from Dictionary.com). We each seek out these things. However, my idea of excitement, diversion and amusement are different from many people’s ideas of the same. I am diverted by reading a book. Many people may say THAT is “boring”. I am excited by The Discovery Channel’s “Planet Earth”. Many would find that “tiresome or dull”. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure and one woman’s boredom is another’s amusement.

I think these days, people become bored more easily than before. We have surrounded ourselves with so called “excitement, diversion and amusement”, namely through the internet, computer and television, that when we have an absence of these things, we are “bored”. Since when is riding a bike, playing a game, talking with your grandmother, eating, cooking or reading boring?

I am at a place where I am not sure where I am going or where I am trying to go with my life. I want to eventually find something to do that I love, but I am not sure what it is so I am on a continuous search for something “exciting” and lasting. I don’t consider myself bored. Confused maybe. Unsure. Hopeful. And distracted. We just moved to a new office where instead of a cubicle with high walls, we have an open room with low tables and even lower partitions. You can sit at your desk and see each and every person that walks by. Every time someone goes by, I catch a movement in the corner (or middle) of my eye and I have to look up to see what it is. Then I look back down to my work and I can’t remember what I was doing before. So I move onto something else.

The same thing happens with the internet. We are getting used to distracting ourselves with endless information, each thing segueing into the next (cooler) thing, that we never really finish doing any one thing completely. And this is why, when we take ourselves away from the internet, we get “bored”. Our synapses have stopped rapidly firing. Our eyes have to focus on one thing only. We have to wait for satisfaction. Boooooring, right?

Maybe I have been watching too much Julie and Julia (both of them are looking for something to do to combat boredom in their lives and turn to cooking, blogging and writing a cookbook). Is it in our natures to be unsatisfied (or as wiki says, “uninterested”)? We are always looking for more money, a better job, a cuter hairstyle or something more “exciting”. Will we ever stop and say, “That’s enough; I am satisfied now”? Or is our thirst for amusement what keeps everything in the world moving forward, what keeps us striving for knowledge, for love, for happiness and for life?

Maybe we will never cease to be bored. And now that you mention it, I wonder, is that really such a bad thing after all?

Note to readers: The words “bored, boring and boredom” were used 16 times in this document.

January Self Imposed Read

If you haven’t already read it, read The Time Travelers Wife, also by Audrey Niffenegger. I read it and loved it, which is the reason I decided to read her most recent book, Her Fearful Symmetry. This book is set in London and is about a ghost in a flat near Highgate Cemetery. It is a pretty fast read, interesting enough, but without the pizzazz that The Time Travelers Wife had. When I read The Time Travelers Wife, I couldn’t put it down. I was at my parent’s house for Christmas and I was sleeping in an unheated room in the winter time and I still would lie in bed with my arms and head exposed and freezing cold, reading it until the wee hours of the night. This book is good, but not that good!

I also read Julie and Julia which if you haven’t already heard, is about a young girl just about to turn 30 who decides to cook every single recipe from Julia Child’s famous cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. In one year. Five hundred and some odd recipes, each with pounds and pounds of butter all cooked within 365 days. And she writes a blog about it.  But the book is about more than just her adventure. It is a story about a girl who has hopes and dreams but is not sure what they are or if she will ever accomplish them. She is bored of her job, her life and her apartment. She takes on a task, a meaning of life, something to look forward to. Its not an easy one; she has some trials and tribulations, but you like her more for them. She is human. She is all of us. I liked her. She makes me want to cook every recipe from MtAoFC. I give it 4.5 stars.

Word Play

It’s not that I don’t have anything to write about, but I wanted to branch out, to write about something other than travel, food or weather. Yup, most of my blogs are about one of those three topics, either directly or indirectly. So, I thought, why not get some suggestions from someone else, to see if I can write about something else, or if the things that interest me, namely eating, traveling and commenting on the weather, really are the only thing I can elaborate on. Also, researching/finding out about new things is one of my favorite things to do and this will give me knowledge about things that I may not have known about before.

My inspiration comes from Aunt Lucy, who tipped me off about the  Shutter Sisters, who are photographers who are doing a project called The One Word Project. They give you a word every month and you send in photos associated with that word and they post a photo a day from someone who has sent one in. If you get a chance to check out their site, do so, it is very fun. Lucy is also doing a project where she takes photos of things with words on them and posts one every day, which is also really interesting (check it out here). So I guess 2010 is the year of the word.

I will take their idea and add a twist – I am asking people to send ME “one word”, whatever comes to their mind. Once a month I will write about one of the words that have been sent to me. Obviously, I am not going to steal the Shutter Sister’s name or project, so this will be the Word Play project. (Version 2k10). –