Because I live 35 miles from my place of work, East Palo Alto, having a car is a necessity. I have about a week left before my insurance replacement is done, thus, I have a week to shop for a new car.
My top two priorities in looking for a new car are:
With all of that said, I’ve set up a poll to ask people what kind of car I should buy next. Let me know what you think by voting!
The problem with blogs these days is that the text is so small that you have to hit CTRL-plus 5 times to be able to read the text. Well I found this cool new layout, and after changing mine twice already this year, I’m sticking to this one. It’s clean, easy to read, simple, and as my brother said, “is very Web 1.0.”
A neat new feature that I am rolling out is subscribing via email. You always had the option of getting the RSS feed, but now you can get email updates for every post I write. Hooray! Check it out below:
Yes, these are all clever ways for me to distract myself from all of this residual accident crap I have to deal with.
Don’t be alarmed. I realize that most of the people I work with (whether it’s adults or kids) know that I was in car accident on Sunday, March 23, 2008. I failed, however, to really let anyone else know, and instead became kind of a hermit about it, which is my tendency.
Without going into too many details, here’s what happened: Some guy ran a red light and caused our cars to collide. I hit him with my front end, which collapsed like an accordion. His Mercedes SUV was barely dented on the drivers side (apparently these luxury vehicles are tanks).
Miraculously, all those involved walked out of their cars. Save for some bumps, bruises, burns and back/neck pain, I walked away relatively unscathed–especially in comparison to the fateful March 6, 2002 accident in LA. No doubt I have angels watching over and protecting me, and I have a lot to be thankful for.
I’m currently still processing the whole event as a myriad of emotions have been swelling inside my head including but not limited to anger, gratitude, fear, and shock. I want to thank everyone who has called, texted, emailed, stopped by, hugged, dropped off wine/chocolate/brownies/flowers, or simply just asked how I was feeling. Again, my tendency is to be a hermit (I took the days off on Monday and Tuesday and watched the entire season of Firefly on hulu.com, but that’s another story), but it helps to process the event with people.
Regarding my beloved Honda Element, Utada, word from the garage is that she’s a total wreck, but I’m still waiting to hear back from AAA’s damage appraiser. Sad. She definitely had a good run.
Thanks, everyone.
UPDATE (3/28/2008): Got word from Paul, the AAA appraiser, this morning that she’s a total wreck. Will commence car hunting this weekend. Feelings are bittersweet.
Related Post: The Horrible Fall and the Triumphant Return of Utada
Years ago, a fortune teller told me that spring is my best season, and I have no reason to not believe that because who would not love the blooming flora and the renewed sun of the season? But spring also marks the beginning of my favorite activity: traveling.
And I surely have been been traveling a lot over the last month–I went to Hawaii for a week and then Los Angeles with my students this past week–and it’s not ending soon! Here’s a quick list of where I’m headed this season:
And with all of this traveling (especially for month-long jaunt to the South in June and July), I am striving to travel as lightly and efficiently as possible. Here’s a neat blog post with 36 tips on efficient traveling:
- Pack just a few clothes with only a couple complimentary, solid colors — no patterns. Black is a good idea if you need to be able to dress up and be casual.
- Pack only what you can carry on to the flight.
- Leave the laptop behind, as well as blackberry and any other tech gadget. For computer addicts, being away from the internet’s constant flow of data for a few days recharges and relaxes you in ways that you never experience at home.
And here are my own tips about passing through that sometimes dreadfully slow Security Checkpoint
Spring time… flowers blossom, babies take their first breaths, and… BUILD goes on college tours. I’ll be in Los Angeles this week taking 35 of my kids on a tour of 7 different college campuses, including my alma mater, USC!
More when I get back…
Here’s a sneak peek of last week’s trip to Hawaii, which, by the way, was one of the best vacations I have ever taken!
I forgot to put up my “I stepped out… sorry I missed you” sign. I’m
currently on Hawaii celebrating my 6th Rebirthday.
I will be back on Sunday, March 9.
Mahalo!
This is an old video, but my dad sent it to me, and it’s definitely worth the 8 minute viewing.
It really poses a lot of questions for the future of education because our future is zooming into some vast unknown. If mainstream education is changing, what does that mean for our students and our systems that are currently failing our students? What needs to happen to catch them up?
Last Sunday night, I had a series of three dreams, two of which I want to share with you here. They’re actually kind of short so here goes:
I was taking care of a baby. My baby. (By the way, in real life I don’t have one.) The baby (he must’ve been less than a year old) and I were outside and going for a walk; he in his stroller, and I walking at a nice, calm pace. All of a sudden, the sky turns 
grey, a harsh wind begins to blow, and huge drops of rain begin to pour down on us. I was completely unprepared! I didn’t know that there was a chance of rain, and I had no umbrella.
My first thought was to protect the baby because the stroller didn’t have a rain hood, and the baby was in danger of getting wet. So I pick up the baby from the stroller, and begin to place the baby underneath my shirt to shield the baby from the rain.
Now this is all well and good, and the baby is pretty dry, but as soon as I look down to see the baby, he starts to shrink! Yes, shrink! The normal baby-sized baby now is about the size of my hand or palm, which is convenient for my shielding efforts.
Dream 2 was more like my conscious self stepping out of Dream 1, realizing that it was a dream, and then analyzing that dream. Anyway, in Dream 2 I interpreted that Dream 1 was about a rebirth and a new beginning particularly because the baby was in that dream. I also interpreted that the baby was really a symbol of me–e.g. it was a symbol of MY rebirth and my new beginning.
I was kind of excited to have this lucid dream (Dream 2). I don’t think I had ever had a dream where I knew that I was dreaming and that I was analyzing it critically. A few days later, I was sharing the dream with my friend Alex, who has this gift of enlightenment that many people are drawn to, and she gives me a different twist to the interpretation of my first dream. She explained that maybe the rain was a symbol of a challenge, and the baby, yes, the baby was still symbolic of me. Well, when I take the baby out of the stroller and shield him from the rain, what I am inadvertently doing is shielding the baby from the challenge, and so the baby shrinks… it doesn’t grow, it does the opposite.
What does this mean? Well clearly it shows that perhaps I should not shield myself from any impending challenges because it will thwart my opportunities for growth. I shouldn’t stifle my own growth and development. Yes, the baby symbolizes and is a harbinger for new beginnings, and perhaps I have some new beginnings to look forward to. I just hope that I have the sense to take make the right choices so that I can face these challenges head on.
Moral of the story: Babies are resilient!
Again, I find myself reading another travel memoir, after reading Catfish and Mandala. This time I’m reading about “One woman’s search for everything across, Italy, India, and Indonesia,” after a difficult divorce and what seemed like a mid-life crisis in her 30’s.
What a beautifully written soul-bearer! Even though at times I wanted to strangle the author/protagonist because of her ridiculously whiny explanation for her divorce and love-ache (I could not help but think that SHE did this to HERSELF! ugh, victims), she manages to be likable throughout most of her book and most of her spiritual journey.
The book is separated into three equal parts for each of the three countries she lives in, and my favorite part was her spiritual/devotional journey to India. Without giving it away, here are some choice excerpts from the book:
by Elizabeth Gilbert