leftovers

I'm a firm believer in following one's dreams. After all, that is what brought me here to LA 8 years ago; my dreams of living in a large city, having a boyfriend and being in a band. In fact, I've wanted to be in a band probably since I was around 12 and first fell in love with the Thompson Twins. But, that's a story that's been told a few times. My other dream, and one that is perhaps well less know, goes back even further . As a child, sometimes I would get hungry and prepare myself a snack in the kitchen. For as long as I can remember, being in a kitchen has always inspired me to pretend that I'm a cook in my own cafe. I would lovingly prepare peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, imagining that someone other than myself would be eating them shortly. As I've aged, I find myself thinking more and more about that distant day in the future when I will, in fact, operate my own cafe or diner. And in these fantasies, the cafe is located in my hometown of ...

Some people seem to spend their entire lives searching for something that's just without of reach. That something is unknown, indescribable, and in fact, intangible. It doesn't exist, and thus the wild goose chase begins. Whether you call it love, happiness, acceptance, success; there are those who are not happy with whatever amount of it they achieve . It's always about more, or a different kind, or something else altogether. It's true that you don't always get what you want, but that sometimes you find what you need, and that you don't know what you have until it's gone. Old sayings that have become pop songs that live on as sage advice throughout generations. Maybe I'm boring, maybe I'm simple, maybe I'm disillusioned myself but I think being happy and successful is just not being miserable and a failure. If there is one person worse off then you, perhaps you should be happy for what you have. You may have to put some effort into this....

I like, scratch that... I LOVE Victorian Architecture and on many occasions have passed some time looking at or drawing floor plans and designs of Victorian houses which someday I would love to live in. If I ever grow up and have a big house of my own, I would want it to be a Victorian, keeping many of the original features with only a few subtle modernizations such as central air. While looking at some plans online, I found one for a country house which has specified in the plans an 8,000 gallon cistern which collects rainwater from the slate roof. It claims that rainwater from a slate roof is "pure and clean, free from color, and used with ice in summer is better and healthier than well water." Many homes back in Kansas had cisterns and wells; the farmhouse where I grew up actually had a system of eaves which fed into a cistern which you could pump manually. Little metal cups suspended by chains would pulley around the inside of the well when you rotated the handle, and o...