So, people tell me I'm guarded, and I guess that's true, but mostly it's not intentional, it's just that I've no idea what people could possibly find interesting.

Therefore, in the interest of letting down my guard a little (and because all the cool kids are doing it), I join the “Question Me” Queue.

told us which she'd read…now it's my turn.

1984, George Orwell
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Animal Farm, George Orwell
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
The BFG, Roald Dahl
Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
Bleak House, Charles Dickens
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
Catch 22, Joseph Heller
The Catcher In The Rye, JD Salinger
Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
Dune, Frank Herbert
Emma, Jane Austen
Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
The Godfather, Mario Puzo
Gone With The Wind, Margaret Mitchell
Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, JK Rowling
Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
His Dark Materials trilogy, Philip Pullman
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Douglas Adams
The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
Holes, Louis Sachar
I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
Katherine, Anya Seton
The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, CS Lewis
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
The Lord Of The Rings, JRR Tolkien
Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
Magician, Raymond E Feist
The Magus, John Fowles
Matilda, Roald Dahl
Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
Middlemarch, George Eliot
Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
Mort, Terry Pratchett
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
On The Road, Jack Kerouac
One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
Perfume, Patrick Süskind
Persuasion, Jane Austen
The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
Pride And Prejudice, Jane Austen
The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
The Ragged Trousered Philantrhopists, Robert Tressell
Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier
The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Secret History, Donna Tartt
The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
The Stand, Stephen King
The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
Tess Of The D'urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee
A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
The Twits, Roald Dahl
Ulysses, James Joyce
Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
War And Peace, Leo Tolstoy
Watership Down, Richard Adams
The Wind In The Willows, Kenneth Grahame
Winnie-the-Pooh, AA Milne
The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte

I'm reading a book – little more than a romance novel, really, but a nice book to go with bubble baths – that takes place at the Jersey Shore, and it's making me feel all nostalgic. Fuzzy's never been to NJ – I almost want to drag him out there. Maybe in October.

Hands: Still sore. When they're not numb.

Movies: Liked X-Men2, was unimpressed with Matrix Reloaded.

Buffy: I echo 's “yes” – if it had to end, I'm glad for the fashion in which it was done.

Xenobia
from this day forward your superhero name will be:
The Speedy
Puzzler

your special power is: Weather Control

Not because I have nothing to say, but because I've been working on setting up my own blogspace. No, I'm /not/ stealing and 's idea. I'd been thinking about it for a while, and moved all my many many domain names around trying to decide which one to use, and finally decided I didn't like ANY of them. So I bought a new one, and spent the week playing with Blogger, and GreyMatter and Movable Type. For the record, I went with the latter.

Also, it seems silly to keep paying for sites like LJ and OD when I have a gazillion domains I'm not using. (Ok, well, not quite a gazillion. Less than 10!)

So, if you want to read directly, here's the link:
Illusions of Motion, and if you'd rather read the syndicated version, it's , and either way, I welcome comments and contributions.

(Also, to Nimiriel and Filidh, I linked to YOUR blogs, which are both on /my/ daily-read list.)

See, I didn't even whine about having carpal tunnel issues and not being able to feel fingers :)

(How I spent My Easter Vacation – Part II)

At three am I was awakened by clicking, like a thousand miniature tapdancers all slightly out of sync. Or maybe it was cracking, like a hundred ice cubes settling into a vat of boiling water. Whatever it was, the cause was the air conditioner. I woke Fuzzy, and made him turn it off and open up the windows, and then we went back to sleep.

I woke again at six am, and heard birdsong. The birds are conducted by the Carpenterias (woodpeckers) who rise before the sun to peck away at anything in their path, including the metal poles that hold up palapas. Such a cozy sound – or not.

My mother came knocking on the casita door, then, and so, leaving Fuzzy to sleep, I went with her to climb the lighthouse stairs to the third floor of her house, which taken up entirely by a palapa-covered deck with a 360-degree view of the Gulf, and the lights on the Malecon of La Paz, and the open desert.

As the light changed the birdsong changed as well, moving through all the different voices in the avian choir. We sat and talked and sipped coffee, and then I went to shower, only to find there was no water pressure, in preparation for a poolside manicure and pedicure ($26 US for both)

After that, I woke Fuzzy, and volunteered to make lunch. Nothing fancy, just tuna and red peppers and grapes, and everything involved lime. We puttered around the house for the rest of the day, took naps, explored the garden, tried to get a picture of Abigail's Lizard. (Abigail is my parents' chihuahua, and she has a 'pet' iguana named Harry who lives in the tree outside the front door.) I took a swim, as well, though I was chased out of the water by a swarm of yellow jackets. My mother swears they only wanted a drink, but I don't believe her.

At sunset, we began to set up for a belated (by one day) Passover party. Not a seder in the traditional sense, but an interesting collection of people, representing Americans, Canadians, Colombians, Israelis, and Mexicans. It was interesting hearing the Israeli take on What Passover Means, as opposed to the North American Catholic and Jewish versions. (The Americans of all religions, and the Canadians, had religious connotations, the Israelis downplayed religious aspects of the holiday).

The dinner reflected the company: Kugel from Yoav, my great-grandfather's meatball recipe from my mother, salad from one of the Candadian women, sugar-free berry cheesecake from one of the other Americans, and Chicken Mole served in Puff Pastry from Maria, my mother's assistant. My contribution was making pitchers of cosmopolitan, which all of the women loved, and the men sneered at, opting for Negro Modelo instead.

The party broke up at a reasonable hour, but eleven at night is LATE when you've been up since six, and we tumbled into bed, and slept almost instantly.

We were up before dawn doing all the mad rushing around that we always do before we leave for a trip. We'd hired a car instead of choosing to garage the Forester while we were gone, and while it's not cheap, it's nice being able to nap through the drive to SFO in relative comfort.

Fuzzy kept talking to me, he said, to distract me from the driver's reckless driving. I was trying to sleep, and was completely oblivious, so the talking wasn't appreciated.

The airport was painless. Yes, they made announcements (in English only, how arrogant is that?) that we were on Homeland Security Threat Level Orange, but really, with the exception of the announcements there was no noticable difference in the way anything happened.

We boarded early, and took off early. Yay for Alaska Airlines. The plane was mostly full, but we were in the back, so had three seats for the two of us. A nice bonus. What I love most about flying Alaska to Cabo is that the flight is just long enough to keep you busy from takeoff to landing: first drinks, then lunch (pasta salad and corn chips and scary Carlos V bars, from the Mexican Nestle plant. This chocolate is so bad, I won't even taste it.), then everyone does their immigration cards and customs forms together. “Don't worry about the boxes for your name. There aren't enough boxes. Just write your whole name, just like it is on your passport. You know how the drivers in Mexico never stay in their lanes? Well, we don't stay in the lines,” was the flight attendant's instruction. On the surface it seems racist, but if you've ever driven in Mexico, you know it's /true/.

Then you land. We were early, which annoyed people, so we sat until our projected arrival time until they brought stairs to the plane. Immigration was as painless as ever – sometimes I think they don't even look at your forms, they just like to stamp stuff – and we got lucky at customs and got GREEN lights this time. (If you've never been to Mexico, customs searches entering the country are random – there's a traffic light at the gate, and you press a button. If you get a green light, you pass, if you get a red light, they search your stuff. The last time we were there I had a washing-machine box full of chocolate and tea and pillows and quilts for my parents, and I got the red light, but it was Christmas, so they asked me what was in the box, and believed me when I told them, “Pillows.”)

The taxi driver at the other end of the customs gate tried hard to get us to ride with him, but my parents, and Abigail Maria Sanchez (their neurotic blonde chihuahua) were already there, waiting. We loaded the car, and within minutes were on Highway One driving West from San Jose del Cabo through Cabo San Lucas, and then North on the Pacific road to Rancho Nuevo.

The drive, by the way, is amazing. You're driving on a road that winds over mountains, through gardens of cardon cactus, century plants, and agave, knowing absolutely that this is the living desert, but off to the west is the ocean, right at the edge of the cactus groves, and off to the east, as yet unseen, is the Gulf of California (formerly known as the Sea of Cortez).

* * *

Rancho Nuevo is a development on the Pacific (ocean) side of Baja Sur, and my parents had originally owned a lot there, and planned to build. My mother realized very quickly, however, that she does not have the necessary personality for someone building a house without a place to live, which is how they ended up in El Comitan, but that's another story.

Their friends, Melanie and Gunther, live right on the beach in Rancho Nuevo, in a three story house where all the power is solar. (Because of this, they have a propane-powered refrigerator, well, actually, three of them, because they're tiny), and they greeted us with Pacifico Claro beer (con limon) and guacamole, and then we ate grilled hot dogs and pasta salad with shrimp under their palapa while the sun set over the water. I've exchanged email with Melanie over the years that my parents have lived in Baja, and it was wonderful finally meeting this woman. Gunther and I got along from the start, teasing each other like mad, and it was a wonderful way to begin a vacation.

The drive home over the mountain road through Todos Santos was fine until full dark, and then Chris and I, to spare my mother's sanity, took to 'helping' my stepfather. “No, Ira, there are six cars in the oncoming lane, don't pass.” “Oh, Ira, if it says TOPE: 500m that means there really is a tope coming up.” “Hey, stop for cows!” (For the uninitiated, topes are speed bumps, but they're really tall and triangular. In some places, in an attempt to make it clearer for English speakers they're also labelled “Bumpo”).

We finally made it home, though, and had tea and a snack and went to bed in the casita, after a brief tour. I hadn't seen my parents house /finished/ and it was – is – lovely. But I still think the bed in the casita is too hard. :) (More to come)

Lifted from

The following are based on my birth name.

Melissa:
You want to be productive and feel useful, and enjoy helping solve problems. You like to be busy and not waste time. You can be quite inventive and quite curious. You have a diplomatic flair to your nature. Equality and fairness are important to you. You are relatively demonstrative in your affections. You enjoy being stroked verbally and physically. You try to be prudent. You have good business acumen. You have a need to earn money to prove your success to society and must learn the true value of material gains and status. You have much enthusiasm with a driving attitude toward achievement in life.

Annette:
You have much enthusiasm with a driving attitude toward achievement in life. You can handle details well. You have a methodical mind. You must learn to give 'wise' service and not be a martyr. You need to learn to be expressive. You are a person who cannot tolerate being misunderstood. Your privacy is important to you. You have a rich inner life. You need to learn faith in place of fear. You need to learn to be expressive. You are a person who cannot tolerate being misunderstood.

Klindienst:
You have good recuperative abilities and strong mental determination. You are very private and dislike others prying into your affairs. You must learn the lessons of self-worth; learn to love yourself before you can love others. You need to learn to give and receive love for love's sake. You have a need to be assured of affection. You must learn to give 'wise' service and not be a martyr. You have a discriminating nature coupled with perseverance and family pride. You need to learn to give and receive love for love's sake. You have a need to be assured of affection. You need to learn to be expressive. You are a person who cannot tolerate being misunderstood. You must learn to give 'wise' service and not be a martyr. You have a need to earn money to prove your success to society and must learn the true value of material gains and status. You need to learn faith in place of fear.

But since I succumbed to wanting a name that would fit on forms, and be easier to spell, here's the result for my married name, as well (first and middle don't change).

Bartell:
You have a tendency to resist change. Don't miss opportunities for growth. You have a love of creature comforts, but must learn to handle money. You have a need to be up front. You enjoy a challenge. You can take thought-directed actions. You need to learn faith in place of fear. You need to learn to be expressive. You are a person who cannot tolerate being misunderstood. You must learn the lessons of self-worth; learn to love yourself before you can love others. You must learn the lessons of self-worth; learn to love yourself before you can love others.

And if you want to do your own name, you can go here

This has nothing to do with the film.

This has everything to do with not being able to sleep. Alright, yes, its's after 6:30 in the morning, but I'm spoiled, I don't start work til ten, I never get up this early.

I woke at 6:17, for no real reason, as I've been doing almost every morning for the last month, no matter how late I go to bed. It's a completely random time, and yet, every morning, that's what the clock says.

Cleo pushed me into semi-wakefulness at 5:47, also, because she saw or smelled or heard, or dreamed she saw, smelled, or heard, a cat within a mile of the house. More and more, we think she thinks she's a Staffy (Staffordshire Bull Terrier), at least in part, despite her being only 22 pounds, because she ACTS just like one. And she makes the funniest noises when she's on Patrol, grumbling and warbling to herself as she moves from window to window and then does circuits around the yard. At least, they're cute at more reasonable hours.

So it's early, and I could start the day – take a shower, make coffee, be productive. OR, I could crawl back into bed until nine.

I feel all groggy and disoriented.
Guess which option wins :)

Happy Birthday