Ever since that class, I’ve been keeping an eye out for my totem animal, and I think it’s a spider.  I realize that spiders are arachnids, but there’s something about their appearance in my life which I find strategic and somewhat comforting.  I haven’t killed a spider since.

I really hope my totem animal isn’t a centipede.  Espeically a house centipede.  I lost count of how many I’ve crushed just after telling it, “I’m sorry!”

Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions.
Pick Your Artist:
Alanis Morissette

Are You Male or Female?
A Man

Describe Yourself:
Orchid

How Do You Feel?
Limbo No More

Describe Where You Currently Live:
Your House

If You Could Go Anywhere, Where Would You Go?
Citizen of the Planet

Your Favorite Form Of Transportation:
Head Over Feet

Your Best Friend:
Simple Together

Your Favourite Colour Is:
Torch

What’s The Weather Like?
Perfect

Favourite Time Of Day:
Wake Up

If Your Life Was A TV Show, What Would It Be Called?
In Praise of the Vulnerable Man

What Is Life For You?
So-Called Chaos

Your Lovers/Relationships:
This really depends on the person, but Unsent is my blanket answer.

Looking For:
21 Things I Want in a Lover

Have:
Precious Illusions

Wouldn’t Mind:
That I Would Be Good

Your Fear:
Tapes

Best Advice:
You Learn

If You Could Change Your Name, What Would You Change It To?
Baba

Thought For The Day:
These R the Thoughts

How I Would Like To Die:
Giggling Again for No Reason

My Soul’s Present Condition:
So Pure

My Motto:
Incomplete

To her husband.

One of the most important things I’ve ever done.

“We evolved as social primates who hardly ever encountered strangers in prehistory,” Dr. Miller says. “So we instinctively treat all strangers as if they’re potential mates or friends or enemies. But your happiness and survival today don’t depend on your relationships with strangers. It doesn’t matter whether you get a nanosecond of deference from a shopkeeper or a stranger in an airport.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/science/19tier.html?em

The excerpt below is from a talk which best-selling author and spiritual advisor Dr. Wayne Dyer gave at the Miraval resort in Arizona.  It’s a great reminder to be thankful for what you have.  (Boldface indicates the verbal emphasis given by Dr. Dyer.)

“If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead, and a place to sleep, you’re richer than 75% of the world. Just that. Doesn’t that call for some gratitude?

If you woke up this morning with more health than illness, you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week because of illness.

If you have money in your bank – any money in the bank or even in your wallet – and spare change in a dish someplace in your life, you are among the top eight percent of the world’s wealthy. Ninety-two percent of the people don’t have that.

If you can attend a church meeting without fear – that is fear of arrest of arrest, of torture or death – you are more blessed than 3 billion people in the world.

And if you’ve never experienced the danger of battle or the loneliness of imprisonment, or the agony of torture or the pangs of starvation, you’re ahead of 500 million people in the world today.

If your parents are still alive or still married, you are very rare, even in the United States.

So if you have the opportunity to think as you choose to think, to worship as you choose to worship, and you have a little bit of change in your pocket, and you’ve got your health, and you’ve got someone who cares about you, then you have an awful lot to be grateful for.”

Dr. Wayne Dyer
It’s Never Crowded Along the Extra Mile

“Her name was ندا (Neda), which means voice or call in Farsi.  On 9/11, the world said “We are all American.” Today, we are all Iranian.”

I’ve long resented Alexander Graham Bell for robbing me of the near-necessity of eye contact and facial expressions when communicating with another person.  But nowadays, the greater killjoy is seeing a friend’s names pop up on Caller ID and answering only to hear them multi-tasking as they’re trying to carry on a conversation.

I suppose I should feel lucky enough when people think to call, or to even have people to call.  And I do.  But when did phone calls become relegated to the multi-tasking portion of the to-do list… something to be crossed off while picking up prescriptions and dog poop?

The mobility of connective technology is its most sought-after feature.  We demand it.  ”Take all of my CDs and records, the phone book, and if you throw in the entire Internet, you’ve got yourself a customer.”

Make me more mobile.

Why?  We’re no busier than people in the 1950′s.  But we’ve convinced ourselves and are conditioned to believe that the speed of life is greater than or equal to the speed of light – at all times – and anyone who can’t jump aboard your moving train isn’t worth the reduction in speed.  Byproducts of this lifestyle are people who are averse to sitting still for anything long enough to give anything their full attention, least of all the person with whom they’re communicating.  We live lives of convenience and are then shocked to find them filled with people of convenience.

Sitting still is, for the busy beavers, slothful at best and, for those terrified of introspection, potentially detrimental.  Can’t sit still.  Gotta go.  Four shots in that tall, please.

The asynchronous nature of email, voicemail, and text messages has also effectively disconnected us from those we consider close to us.  And Facebook statuses, tweets and the occasional text message have made us both voyeur and reporter to audiences both intimate and anonymous.

I don’t want reporters; I want cohorts.

Admittedly, I’m as guilty as anyone for multi-tasking while on the phone.  If you’ve ever spoken to me for longer than fifteen minutes, I’ve peed while talking to you; if we’re close, you probably heard it.  Thirty minutes or more?  God only knows to what you’ve unknowingly been a party.  But when I do get a friend on the phone, I give full attention to the call, if for no other reason than a sense of tradition.  A phone call was something for which I waited, planned, even pined.  As a kid, I would run past three ringing telephones to answer the one I had purchased for myself with saved allowances.  Before making a call, affairs would be put in order, items of particular interest would be written on a to-discuss list, and only then would I pick up the phone and dial the number of the desired party.  Friends were ranked not on social networking profiles, but by how expertly you could dial their phone numbers without looking.

My kids will use a corded phone.  If that means I have to retrofit my Jetson’s-like house or chain a cell phone to the floor, so be it.

There is magic in a tether.