appreciate.

music education. What in the world would I be without it? Grateful to my dear friend Lizz for introducing me to the inspiring, uplifting, beautiful music class of PS22 led by Gregg Breinberg. Teachers like him are a gift.

Here's landslide. Also check out viva la vida and Don't stop Believin'.

Not even the same person.

Have you ever read a book that rocked your world? A book so rich and perfect that all of the inky pages come to life, swallow you up, and spit you back up like a newborn baby? I have. I just finished it. It's this book right here...

I have a history with unfinished books. Something always gets in the way of me getting to that final chapter/volume/page. It's almost like I'm allergic to the last half of any story. 

I have wrestled with this brick of a book for years. In high school I did a (not to toot my own horn but toot! toot!) stellar group presentation on it after reading maybe 30 percent of the text, and I never missed a beat (it was more an acting lesson than a literary exercise. I believe the acronym is BS).

In college I picked a copy up again while in Monterey, while feeling sentimental about my California roots. I had fallen in love with Steinbeck over Pastures of Heaven, one of my all time favorites, and I knew that sometime I'd have to dive into what the man himself considered his great masterpiece-to-be.  Still... life, and school, and hectic hectic everything kept me from sitting down and digging in.

Well this year I took it by the horns. It's a thick one, but once I started I couldn't stop. I stayed up late at night to find out what my new group of people were up to... How all of the characters big and small were dealing with the everyday. I laughed with them, marveled with them, hated them, loved them, wanted to shake them, and finally cried with them. I was absolutely starving for the next page. It was beyond brilliant. Every line was heart and soul and the writing so well crafted and cared for. Annnnd I'm gushing.

Best of all it's reopened that part of me that was locked shut by the business of life. I love to read and I see things with just a little bit of new eyes. That's what a good book should do to you I guess. Make you just a step better and a leap smarter.

Now to force everyone else to read it. Starting with PG.

And as for me I've been assigned 100 Years of Solitude...Another book I've failed at completing...but this time I. mean. business.

EXTREMELY entertaining.

"extreme sheep LED"

Now off to go for a run. Perhaps I should strap  

some christmas lights to my back.