Tag: excerpts

Do Your Own Thing

I’m still reading the comments from my 100 Things to do Before I Go posts. The best one so far is from Claire, who says:

“…the direct result of you writing this excellent list is me quitting my stupid, stupid admin job and heading to uni to study nursing at the ripe old age of 27. Thanks Maggie … I really needed this!!! Reading your list and seeing all the fabulous things you would get up to got my bum into gear to start living my life too.
xx”

Well done, Claire. Go! Go! Go!

Here are some ideas that intrigued me from the lists you posted on your sites. I like the way they all sound together:

Sarcomical
show photos in a gallery
participate in a humanitarian mission in another country
have a rose garden
Daaydreaming
22. Find my best friends from growing up .. Maria Salas, and Phillip Avila
29. Be debt free
41. Learn to accept that I will always need meds for my depression
This Happy Home
1. own a store with big display windows.
12. embroider a self portrait.
24. make my own wine.
Writing to Sanity
12. Do not go online for 3 consecutive days
61. See an author read from his or her work
73. Learn the correct way to hold and shoot a gun
The Littlest Tree Hugger
7. Learn Spanish, French, Arabic and conversational Japanese
12. Help put my niece thru college (if she wants to go)
25. Keep a goldfish for longer than a month
The Fray
1. See sloths in Costa Rica.
5. Live off the food in the kitchen (a la Laura) for one month
11. Spelunk.
Lucky Magpie
28. Find out the real name of my biological father
49. Do something to get into the Guinness Book of World Records
72. Have part of my income come from something internet related
Esmon.net
1. Make my own cream soda.
6. Spend a night on a train.
19. Build and furnish a dollhouse.
More Kisses Please
3. ride a giraffe
13. spend a night in the room Janis Joplin died in
16. pay someone’s rent for the month
The Nonhipster Mom
7. Make really great marinara sauce.
12. Stop being mad at my parents.
19. Make puff pastry from scratch.
Scarlet Words
23 Build a time capsule
24 Read the dictionary from beginning to end
73 Have my dog’s teeth cleaned
The Metamorph
8. Own a Victorian style home, complete with claw-foot tub, window seat, and sparkling crystal chandelier.
14. Learn to sing again.
24. Stay a night in Dracula’s Castle.
Spandrel Studios
3. Have tea at the Plaza
8. Design the perfect jacket
9. Flip an egg in a pan

Lessons

From Esquire, Jan. 2008

“What are you really doing? At the core? My answer is—and this is what I’ve learned—you’re basically getting people to trust you.” Steve Wynn, Hotelier

“The most powerful tool of all is the word no.” Andy Grove, Former chairman of Intel

Resolving Conflict Quickly

I just wrote a post on 43Folders about The Four Agreements. If you’re not familiar with 43Folders, it’s my friend Merlin’s productivity blog, and it’s pretty darn useful. Anyway, post excerpt:

I dread conflict. In fact, when I know a confrontation is imminent, it’s all I can think about. I mull it over when I could be labeling file folders, I ponder it while my inbox burgeons, while my 3×5 cards gather dust. Conflict is my productivity disaster.
Fortunately, The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz gave me a few significant tools for moving past conflict in any arena…

Read the rest.

High on Life

Oddest quote I came across while researching an essay for a fatherhood anthology:

“‘The strangest thing I’ve tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father,’ Keith Richards was quoted as saying by British music magazine NME.

‘He was cremated and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn’t have cared,’ he said. ‘… It went down pretty well, and I’m still alive.'”

#42 Make Your Time Line

Prompt on page 49 of
No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog.

My first decade:

Age 1: I do not cry when hungry or tired. The doctor says I’m probably slow.

Age 2: My mom and dad stare down at me. Dad says, “I think she’s lying.” Mom says, “I don’t think she knows how to lie.” I am lying.

Age 3: I would like to wear dresses and shiny shoes all the time, please.

Age 4: Dustin tries to “hump” my leg in the kindergarten recess line, and I shove him. Forever after, I will find the name Dustin slightly irritating.

Age 5: I carry a red purse with a long strap, and fill it with pennies. One day while Joey and I are chasing each other around the playground, I swing it excitedly and hit him in the back. His face is so surprised and pained that the memory of it still makes me cringe.

Age 6: Mrs. Bartlett sends my best friend home because she has a hole in her sweater. I cry because I know her family is poor, and I have to stand the corner as punishment for crying. I attend a new school for third grade.

Age 7: While swinging, I realize I have no impending doctor or dentist appointments, and experience a surge of pure joy.

Age 8: My father dies. At his body viewing, a young man who works at the funeral home takes me to the refrigerated florist shop to buy me a flower. I choose a carnation, a white one with red stripes.

Age 9: Mrs. Ross is my happy, curly-haired fourth grade teacher, and she assigns us poetry exercises. Her note on my first haiku says “Great imagery! You will be an excellent writer one day.”

Age 10: “Mom?” I say. “How do gay people have sex?” Mom takes a deep breath and pauses. She says, “I am very uncomfortable telling you this, but they say that if you’re old enough to ask, you’re old enough to know… Gay people have sex in the butt.”

  • ine

    • #5 Be a Sage

    Prompt on page 6 of
    No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog    .

    My favorite pieces of advice:

    To choose a spouse, find someone who is flawlessly kind but has an incredibly strong backbone. See also: Marry him only if you will be proud when your child turns out just like him.

    Don’t make assumptions, and don’t take things personally.

    What you give is what you get. When you predict that negative things will happen, they do. The opposite is also true.

    *Update: Three more good ones:

    Plan less, do more.

    Always have a valid passport.

    Stop picking at that.

    The Mower

    by Philip Larkin
    The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
    A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
    Killed. It had been in the long grass.

    I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
    Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
    Unmendably. Burial was no help:

    Next morning I got up and it did not.
    The first day after a death, the new absence
    Is always the same; we should be careful

    Of each other, we should be kind
    While there is still time.

    We’re Totally Fun Here

    Excerpt from Antonia Cornwell’s very kind recap of her trip to the U.S.:

    “Just as Earl Grey tastes better in England and A&W root beer tastes better in America, certain music sounds better here too, like Elton John’s Crocodile Rock on the Mustang radio when you’re driving past baseball games and white picket fences on the way to the diner to sit at a Formica table and order pancakes and corned-beef hash.”

    Also, this is the second Londoner (Londonist? Londonite? Luddite?) I’ve heard wax nostalgic about pancakes and/or giant American breakfasts. If there’s one thing we do better than public inebriation, it’s hangover breakfasts.

    Sepola!

    Sarah Hepola is a better writer than you (and by you, I mean me). Anyway, today we are celebrating because, despite moving to New York where they frown on such things, Sarah’s blogging again! And this time, she’s not just blogging about her life and articles, but also about sex!

    Here’s what she has to say about American Idol:

    “I start watching, I get addicted, I start shooting American Idol into the soft tissue of my upper thigh.”

    Oh, darling, how we’ve missed you.