Jaedyn G.

Best book ever for young girls, no matter what color...


www.jaedyng.com

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0615565182/sr=8-1/qid=1328133486/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&qid=1328133486&sr=8-1&seller=

Zone One by Colson Whitehead

I LOVE reading... particularly if the title or description has the following words:

mystery

post-apocalyptic

zombie

witch

mystery

plague

ghost/ demon/ spirits

murder

I think you get the point. Give me a good old- fashioned horror monster-ghost who is worshipped by witches who get eaten by zombies who then dies because of a deadly plague and I am happy. I am even happier when there are stories with ethnic or minority lead characters. My love of "science fiction/ fantasy" genre has prompted a long love affair with Tananarive Due (The Good House)  and Octavia Butler (Fledgling, omg so good).

Heavy D....

I miss you already.  Your music is on my greatest hits playlist.

PS: Jam is the sh*t. I listen to it while washing dishes....


I am so sad....and sending prayers and well wishes to your family...

Halloween: Sheriff Izzy in the house!

In 2009, we went to the West Hollywood parade as  vampire and victim a la Interview with the Vampire.

Book clubs are for losers like me....

I recently decided to take my search for friends to the internet....

I figured,  "I like reading and I like wine... why can't read and drink wine with someone and then talk about what we read...."

So far my craigslist post in the city of Los Angeles had generated 3 responses. Three. I am bummed.

This is a list of books that I desparately would like to read and add to the post to give a sense of what type of books I typically read.

Zone One by Colson Whitehead

The Liquid City by Curtis Hopfenbeck

The Hangman's Daughter by Oliver Poetzsch

The Abby by Chris Culver

Black like me by John Howard Griffin.

Some of these book were just added to my list recently, while others have been on there for  a while.

I also started reading a lot of the "classics" as defined by Penguins.

Any other good ones I should know about?

An open letter the Occupy Wall Street Protesters:

Dear Protesters:

I get it. I really do. You are angry and fed up and unsure of the future.  You showed up on time everyday. You never took a sick day. You missed your kid's violin recital to meet that deadline. You did everything right and where are you now? Nowhere.  Or at the very least not where YOU think you should be.  And on top of everything, it seems like nothing will make the slightest difference in the amount of indifference the world has for you.
I am frustrated too. While I am lucky enough to have a job, there are several people in my family who do not. They were not bad employees or lazy, they were just victims of the financial state of their employers. I am sure that they wish that they could be the ones who kept their jobs, but sometimes staying on is just as difficult.  When the economy started to tank,  many employers did what was necessary to cut costs in the most direct way possible. For most, they got rid of their most costly expense: employees. Some companies had no choice but to severely cut their workforce by half or more. I saw it happen at competing firms.  "Oh did you hear that So-and-so is down from 50 to 22 people?" "Well I heard that they were going to a 4 day work week and taking a 20% pay cut."
And at first, as a surviving member of your company you are thankful for your job, period. You might take a pay cut and you might work more hours but you will be making more than unemployment and you will still feel like a positive member of society.

5 Thoughts...

1) As I approach the ripe old age of 30, I can no longer stay out late, stay up late, or wake up late. My body is less and less capable of changing its routine.

2) Washing my make up off at night (on the rare occasion that I actually wear some) is the most difficult part of may day... because all I want to do is dive into bed and go to sleep.

3) Sharing a bed with your spouse is can be seriously over rated. Yes, its sweet to spoon and whisper I love you's into each other ears just for falling blissfully asleep, but all the other nights when he's hot and I'm cold or he wants to face one way and I want to face the other. Or when I really, really want to sleep diagonially in bed, its a just a hassle.

4) The IPAD is my husband's most seductive mistress... after that comes: the dog, the blackberry, the office, and the golf range....

5) I need a hobby. I need something else to do with myself besides working at the office, working at home, cooking dinner, and taking care of the dog. I am going to go ahead and declare that working out does not count. I don't enjoy it and when I don't do it, I feel guilty. I want to join a wine club where I sit in someone's living room and taste wine and eat good food. I tried to start a supper club of sorts with some friends and no one wanted to actually cook the food as much as they just wanted to eat it.

Again, the thing about working out is....

that you can equate working out, which is considered healthy, to many other things that are equally unhealthy, like drinking for example.

When you first decide what kind of drink you are going to have, it's kind of exciting... there is just so much promise to how good you're going to feel afterward. You'll be able to relax and the rest of the day won't be so stressful. That's how excerise people sell you their drug of choice. Excerise will release all those endorphins and you will feel amazing, I promise.

Then you start drinking/excerising regularly, maybe you go to happy hour or the gym every other day and you socialize and realize all the great things you've missed out on. Man this is awesome, I should have started this years ago!

And then behavior becomes a habit and your bodyjust doesn't respond like it used too. Soon it takes one more Cosmo/ lap to get that good feeling. Before you know it, happy hour has become happy night and you have spent more time at the bar/gym then at home.

You think, Ok I will be fancy and try something new.  Now you've done too much. And usually the result is hurting yourself, because you either drank too much or you tried something that your body was not ready for. You spend all of the next day wishing for someone to have mercy on your sorry behind all while promising never to do that again.

And it you didn't throw yourself over the edge, then you probably have a friend that will. You know THAT friend. The friend that always goes just a little too far and is always egging you on, sure you can another shot.... Why NOT go another 15 mins at warp 9 on the treadmill? It will be fun.

As a sidenote- this is one part of the analogy where the subject in question is actually the same person. The friend that probably is in amazing shape, doing pilates and running 15 times a day, si the same person who drinks a lot and is the first to run to stripper pole at a night club.  The friend that  plays club basketball, golf, soccor, and softball,  is the same one who drinks a lot, wears his sunglasses indoors and ends up getting into a fight with the guy in the Ed Hardy shirt.

Finally, you miss one night of fun/working out. And then you miss another. And another. Hmpf, I guess I don't have to go tonight. There is always tomorrow. And then after soon enough, you are where? Right back where you started. Man I can't believe its been so long....it will feel good to get out there and do it.

Why?

because if it wasn't difficult, it wouldn't be a part of life.

This week's best horoscopes courtesy of The Onion...

Taurus Apr 20 - May 20
Your crude and primitive sense of humor will offend lots of people, but just wait until they get a look at your crude and primitive sense of justice.

Leo Jul 23 - Aug 22
You'll learn the value of patience, compassion, and tolerance next week and be rather disappointed that it's actually so low.

Pisces Feb 19 - Mar 20
Mars rising in your sign indicates you are something of a coward, mostly because of the way you keep flinching at it.


The other signs can be found here.

The thing about working out is...

Once you start, it's easy as hell to stop. I have always admired people who enjoy excercising, and I've come to terms with the fact that I'll probably never be one of them.

Confession: I am on an uncharted, scary mission. I have two public events this fall that I have to go to that will require me to wear a bathing suit. (See above for why this mission is scary.)

The first is a bacholorette party in Vegas with a pool/spa day. The bride of said wedding is in awesome shape and so are most of her friends (that does not include me). I have decided that I will not be the one to sulk at the amazing bodies that these women have so hard for. I don't want to feel that shameful embarassment that can wash over you so quickly when it comes to self image. I want to feel confortable and think that I look good. Not as good as them or good in comparision to them. Just good about myself with confidence and self-esteem.

The second is a destination wedding in Mexico for a high school friend of mine. Now in this case, I just don't want to be the cute girl that fell off after high school. This event is for my pride and vanity, not self- esteem.

So, I have taken up a cause to work out and eat better (but there are just certain things I will not give up, hello mac-n-cheese, I am talking about you!). We have a treadmill in our garage, a park that has a track for walking or running, I bought a Jillian Michaels "No Trouble Zones" work out DVD (OMG, I almost died), and a friend of mine has let me borrow the Yoga X DVD from her P90X collection.

Now, before anyone gets impressed, I completely failed the first time I tried to get super serious about this campaign. I mean, seriously?!? Who has time for all that? Then I realized that my expections were WAY too high. How can I go from not working out at all to expecting to do 2 DVDs, run on a track and lift weights all in the same day? I realized that if I plan not only did I have enough time to do this right for the events, but that I have enough time to do this right, period. These changes should be life changes, not temporary modifications so I "unveil" myself at these events.

With that realization, I have modified my working out expections. My goal now is to do a minimum of 30 minutes of something physical everyday. And it can be whatever, like walking the neighborhood with my husband or getting on the dread-mill or cursing at Jillian Michaels on my TV while circuit training in my family room.

With all the pressure to do 5 bazillion excercises-a-day out the window, my behavior is changing and the results are motivating. One day I ran more on the treadmill than I ever thought was possible and when I finished, I was beaming with pride and a sense of accomplishment. Less surprisely, after doing all that work, the last thing I wanted to eat was mac-n-cheese. I wanted something lighter and healthier, so the effects of my run would last.

Oddly enough it's not just my behavior that is changing, it's also my mind. Maybe I could be one of those people who enjoy working out. You know the thing about working out, is that once you start enjoying it, its easy to keep going.

This week's best Horoscopes, Courtesy of The Onion

Leo:

Often it feels as if everything is too hard for you and that anything you try ends in failure, but take heart: Those feelings have to be wrong eventually.

Scorpio :

Decent people everywhere will be shocked and appalled by the treatment you received and the conditions under which you were held, but it's not like their jobs are any better.

Aquarius:

You've been fooling yourself for so long that you've lost track of your sense of identity, your joy in life, and which one is actually the real Shroud of Turin.

Things I am over....

1) Eating outside. I am not sure what it is about Southern California and the constant need to be outside. Yes, we have beauitful weather for walking and running and swimming. But must I always eat outside under the baking sun with an unrelenting assault of leaves and tree bits attacks my plate?

2)Furry boots and short skirts. Again, I am not sure what is it about Southern California and the need to where what looks like winter boots with appears to be a handkerchief masquerading as a skirt. Its a juxtaposition that I don't understand and quite frankly think is silly.

3)The overly agressive driver in the jalopy. I can't tell you how many times I have been cut off while driving to work, by some idiot who is barrelling down the freeway in the broken up, sad clown car version of a 1999 civic. Unlike, the beamer and the benz that regularly mash out my saturn, your car is not fun to look at or aerodynamically pleasing. Its just annoying. So instead of buying that super muffler that sets off car alarms, can you please just get the rear bumper fixed so you can take the packing tape off? Thanks.

4)Spirit Airlines. Haven't heard them? Good, because they are the nickel and dime kings and queens.  Want to check your bag? $40! Want to bring a carry-on bag onto the plane? $35! Want to pick your seat in advance? $5! Want something to drink on the plane? $3 (including water)! Oh and by the way... those fees are just for one way, suckas......

5) The debt ceiling debate. I wish everyone would stop trying to be cute and just solve the problem. The country will continue to run at a deficit no matter much or how little you raise the ceiling... so just do it!

Julian Bond is awesome

Last night, Andre and I went to a Zocalo event last night at the Peterson Auto Museum . It was a discussion betweent he awesome Warren Olney and former NAACP chair Julian Bond.  The civil rights leader was eveything that you would hope for: charasmatic, charming, witty, sharp, and funny.  He recounted several stories from his days at the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee as well as fondly remembering his days at Morehouse college, specifically in a philiosphy class taught by Dr. King.

One of the best moments of the evening was Mr. Boond describing his views on LGBT issue and the black community. He actually "boycotted" Coretta Scott King's funeral because it was held in a church that openly discriminated against gays in the church and had an anti-gay marriage policy. He told stories of how Coretta Scott King was a huge gay rights activist and would have been appalled to know that her service was taking place there. I respect him for trying honor what he thought her wishes might have been.

He also spoke about how  President Obama was disappointing him, but that every other president had disappointed his as well, so there is nothing particularly special about that. He also remarked that he felt somewhat naive in anticpating the kind of negativity that the Republican party has throwing toward the president. He recalled his continuing surprise with the effort and willingness of the Republicans to throw the country into  debt and chaos so that Obama wouldn't get his way.

Lastly, he told great stories about Dr Barnes and Lincoln college after someone in the audience asked about his Dad and the documentary called "The Art of the Steal". If you haven't watched it, go do so, its great.

Sadly, the question and answer section og the evening was quite short and I didn't get to ask either of the questions I had, which were:

1) As the black community struggles to maintain and achieve progress, how can we look at  the dissolution of the black family unit as part of teh problem and what can we do to mend it?

2)I wanted to know what his thoughts were on the Justice department recently announcing that they would not reopen the Malcolm X murder case because they did not view it as a pressing matter or him to be a significant enough person of interest.

What would you ask Julian Bond?

Here is a link to the artcle from last night (AND.... a photo of Andre and I in the audience!)

http://zocalopublicsquare.org/thepublicsquare/2011/07/25/the-names-bond-julian-bond/read/the-takeaway/

food poisoning....

blah....

Feeling like your age, but in a good way...

 Are you one of those people who are soooo mature for his/her age? Well, I was for a very long time. Even now at 29, people still say that I far more mature than they were at my age. Silly me, I thought that once you graduated from college, you needed to buckle down and become an adult, requiring at least some maturity. And oddly enough as a teenager, someone telling you how mature you are seems like such a compliment (probably because when you are a teenager, being an adult seems so awesome). But now as an almost-thirty year old, not quite quite so awesome, and actually, I might even call it a little condscending. I know that its meant as a complement, but seriously, if the standard of 30 has fallen so low that we are still applauding people's maturity, then I am concerned for all of us born in the eighties and later.

Personally, I feel like I am right where I am supposed to be. And of course the operative word in that sentance is "I". Where I am is certainly not were some of my friends are, but that is ok for them. An employed, no-kid-having, grad-school-pondering, home and 401k- owning Angelno is ok for me. My friends and I are staring down 30's door and seriously, some of them are freaking out. I don't entirely get it, but I imagine it is similar to what my mom went through when she turned 40. For me, thirty seems pretty cool. I mean, I have most of the complicated stuff figured out: career, check. Husband, check. Home, check. identity, check. Dog, check. And of course, maturity, check. So when I look at 30, there are so many things already established, it just seems like it should be a breeze. All except for the kid thing, I am good to go for 30.

Top 5 things I don't like about working in an office...

1) I can hear everyone's conversation about everything that has ever happened to them. I know when people's kids are sick, the their in-laws are in town, what they shot of the golf course the other day, etc.... I don't care... please step outside and finish your conversation there...where no one is working or on a business phone call.

2) Farting. I work in an office and people fart...at the their desks...... loudly.....and we have cubicles, not full height walls. If special lights were turned on... the air might actually be green, as if Pepe le Pew walked by... le stink!

3)Inappropriate work attire.... I don't own a business  and never really have, and I pretty sure that wearing the TIGHTEST jeans on the planet are not appropriate, no matter how sexy you are...ever! How tight is too tight? If I can see a hard line crease in your jeans where your butt meets your thighs, A) your jeans are too tight... B) you might want to eat some yogurt...I'm just saying...

4) Disrepect for others food and food containers. So while I am not prepared to storm into my office asking who drank my apple juice, I do wonder who used all my mocha latte creamer and who ate the last of my jello... I am watching...

4 continued) Also- if you lunch container is on the verge of being consumed by the next 3-D version of swamp thing, I suggest you throw the entire container away. Not me nor the enitre office is ready to get E.coli or some other alien bacteria because you can't  remember toss your chicken piccata turned oozy green/blue/blue mush with mold flowers.

5) Use of unnecessary force: see conversation below.

Office Manager: "You need to clean up your work in teh library. We have a lunch and learn today and we will need those tables."

Me: " Yes, I know.. I only plan to work for a little while longer and then I will move my work back to my desk. Besides its only 8 am and the presenation isn't until noon."

OM: "Well you still need to clean up your work, because we will need ALL of the tables for the presentation. Also, your department loves to leave all the chairs spread out through the room.... so you should be sure to tuck ALL of the chairs in at the correct tables before the presentation as well."

Me: "Um..ok."

I immediately clean up my space in the library and when  I go back to put the chairs away. The tables cloths have already been set out for lunch. It was 8:15 am.

Because sometimes you have to

........

Additions to the Gaines household...

.....soooooo..... the same week that HGTV blessed our living room with a much need makeover, two lovely white stray dogs entered into our backyard and adopted us as owners/landlords.

We named them Jack and Lucy. Lucy is on the right. I'm not sure if you can tell in the photo, but Lucy was riding low when she first arrived out the house. They both were starving and scared out of their minds. It took days to earn their trust and make them feel somewhat safe.

Lucy on the left, Jack on the right.



And within a week, Lucy gave birth to three fully healthy beautiful white puppies. Two girls and one boy. The boy is the one wrapped in Lucy's front paws with the wavy hair. This picture was taken the morning after they were born.




This is me with the puppies at 2.5 weeks. They were just starting to open there eyes.



Here are the puppies at 4 weeks in our bathroom with Lucy standing guard. She was never comfortable in the house so she would run in and out to check on the babies. Meanwhile, I sat in the corner stunned by cuteness.

We named them after there appearances: Curly, Fattie, and Tiny.



This is Fattie.





Lucy and the puppies in the "den" that we created with my cousins crate, some blankets, towels and sheets.



This is a video of the puppies at 6 or 7 weeks. We moved them into the breakfast nook of our house to start socializing with humans and weaning from the mom....The one howling is Curly. We named his that after is long curly hair. His new family that adopted him a few weeks ago renamed him Namche after a city they visited in Nepal.

Got PRIDE!

For the past two years now, I have volunteered for the LGBT pride festival in West Hollywood. I have typically volunteered in the beverage section serving beers (mostly bud light) to anyone in possession of enough tickets. What's soooo awesome about pride is the collective sigh of comfort and safety that everyone feels for those 3 days and nights. Believe me, no one is holding back there waiting for next year.

Crazily enough,  its that same self-expression that I find so amazing, that seems to always  have the community in the news for some type of attack on morals or personal values because of the choices its constituents make or for behaving in a certain way. Really, it's that big of deal if a girl wants to wear a tuxedo to prom or if a guy wants to wear a dress? But I also, kinda, understand the dilemna that some consevatives may have with the label of self expression. While I don't see anything wrong with a girl wearing a tuxedo or fading her hair, or adopting an overall appearance similar to a man's, I do see how people walking around in pasties or extreme latex panties that leave nothing for the imagination can be somewhat disconcerting. I don't know of any other festival in a major city where people can walk around naked and it's expected to be ok. Particularly, if children are around. But just because I don't choose to wear those things doesn't mean that they don't have signifcance for the person who does...I have talked to people who truly feel as though leather, studs, and all other sorts of things are part of their self expression.  So, would I want to  walk down the street in head to toe bondage gear, well no, but I will fight for the right for someone to do so (espeically if I have to bombarded with pictures and video of celebrities asses and sex tapes on tv and in magazines that have nothing to do with self expression and everything to do with exploitation). And of course lets face it, that's part what makes pride so much fun, the surprise and spectacle of it all.

Unfortunately, that same spectacle seems to reinforce bullying, violence, and enhance overall disregard for humanity.  I am not quite sure what makes people so angry, so filled with hatred, so upset at the ideas of the LGBT community that they are driven to violence. I am also not sure why they feel so personal affected by a community that they have no interest in participating with or helping. You don't believe that gay marriage is ok, fine, then don't get gay married (Wanda Sykes) . Why does it bother you so much  if two other people do? You don't think homosexuality is right? So what?! I think your open/closeted bigotry is wrong and hypocritcal. But I am not going to fire bomb your house, or beat you death with a bat... Is your heart just so concerned that they gays won't get to heaven because of the choice of their lifestyle? Well, that's on you, because its not a choice for everyone. Sure, its a choice for the drunk girl on springbreak who wants to show how awesome she is by making out with her girlfriends; but not for 5 year old boys who want to walk around in the mom's high heels or for the girl who knows that she was born into the wrong body and shouldn't have breasts or a vagina. Those are not choices; that is DNA expressing itself.

The entire organizational effort behind PRIDE is arguing for equality rights, equal protection, and limiting prejudice while in a safe and friendly environment. Their efforts, as a minority who can strongly pull together, fight for equality and try to sway policy are unparalleled in today's world, at least in my opinion. And as they continue to struggle, I will continue to fight for equal rights for everyone. I am so rooting for the gays.