I had thought I'd posted this video already and it's a bit late now, but oh well...
This really shows some of what I'm grateful for, personally. Probably not too interesting unless you're family (or enjoy guitar music and noisy kids).
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Friday, November 24, 2006
New Wings
new wings
Originally uploaded by Robbi Baba.
Eden has been trying out her new wings. Still a little wobbly.
Wolf House
Posing
Originally uploaded by Robbi Baba.
Aja came over today and we drove out to Jack London State Park and hiked to the Wolf House ruins.
Over the river and through the woods...
Over the river and through the woods...
Originally uploaded by Robbi Baba.
Actually, we only live 5 blocks away, which is one of the things I was thankful for. It used to be 500 miles!
We had a lovely day and you can see the photos here and over on Flickr.
Gwen and Denver
Gwen and Denver
Originally uploaded by Robbi Baba.
Krista's brother's partner's mom and brother. Denver played us an awesome song on the guitar after dinner. They were very good company!
My Plate
My Plate
Originally uploaded by Robbi Baba.
No turkey for me, thanks. Baked tofu and two kinds of vegetarian stuffing. Homemade winter squash ravioli (India helped make) with parmesian cheese, yams cooked with maple syrup and pecans, green beans with crimini mushrooms, too much gravy and green salad with killer garlicy green goddess dressing.
Yum.
Walking it off.
Walking it off.
Originally uploaded by Robbi Baba.
Ugh. I over ate. And since I've been eating mostly raw food for a few weeks it really felt heavy! Fortunately it was one ot those exquisite California autumn days and we had a nice walk (before eating pie).
Great Grandma Sylvia
Great Grandma Sylvia
Originally uploaded by Robbi Baba.
Krista's mom's mom, Sylvia, was supposed to join us for dinner, but wasn't feeling up to it. So after dinner we trundled up to her 'managed care facility' and had a nice visit.
Monday, November 20, 2006
Lots of little news...
On Saturday our friend Jay stayed over. He was up from Santa Cruz, taking a weekend training with the Red Cross and we were very happy to put him up and feed him mushroom barley soup with kale salad.In return he told us wild stories of traveling to Great Briton and visiting many sacred sites and standing stones, etc. All the way up to the Outer Hebrides north of Scotland. Brrrrrrrr.
While he was telling us stories, Krista was keeping Eden happy by doodling little figures on scraps of scratch paper. Eden would color them in and show them to Jay (whose appreciation was apparently like divine nectar to Eden). India colored the top middle one and Eden drew a couple figures as well as coloring them.
Anyhow, I thought them charming enough to keep. Drawings on scratch paper have a very short life span around our house, so I scanned 'em. Here's an assortment I worked on while Aja was over visiting.
The other big news is I finally got my glasses! I got to test them out tonight, driving Aja home to Sebastopol. My god, what a revelation. Everything crystal clear. Much less stressful at night. Woo hoo.
But it's weird taking them off. Ugh. I have to figure out when and where to wear them. They are distance glasses. It's all new to me.
I'll have to post a photo of myself wearing them. At first Krista wanted me to get 'dork' frames. You know, thick black plastic ones. She imagined I'd look cute. Didn't pan out.
So I've got "Norman Rockwell" wire frames. I still don't look cute, but at least I don't look dorky and uncute at the same time.
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Leopards Etc.
Last night we took the girls to see a presentation on big cats by Leopards Etc. We got to see a Lynx, Ocelot, Mountain Lion, Snow Leopard and a King Cheetah! Even from our seats near the very back of the room it was an incredible experience.The animals are so intensely powerful! And WILD!
The point of the show was, of course, to raise awareness of urgent conservation issues. All of these cats are endangered and with expanding human populations they need help. The focus is on preserving wild lands and education to promote co-existence.
We learned a great deal about the cats. I was fascinated!
A few tidbits are floating around in my head--a mountain lion can leap 18 feet in the air! And can leap up to 40 feet across a chasm. They said that in the past 100 years there have only been 19 reported human deaths from mountain lions in all of Canada, America and Mexico! We probably taste awful.
It was weird sitting in a room full of chattering primates come to see the felines. And mostly college students, who seem to be getting younger all the time.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Another Hike
Creek
Originally uploaded by Robbi Baba.
I took the girls to Crane Creek Park for a sunny hike. I fully expected all the creeks to be full after so much rain, but only the main one had water and not very much water at that.
I guess the ground was thirsty.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Up a little late.
Yesterday was am amazing day. I went to the Green Festival in San Francisco with my good friends Meredith and Steve. We drove in their bio-diesel VW bug (so that was pretty green).
They had the good sense to get us there early, as it became incredibly packed by afternoon. It was a very happy crowd, what with the recent elections and all. But it was a very big happy crowd. It became difficult to get around, as the aisles were so crowded. All the lines for food and the bathrooms were super long. It was extremely noisy too. But very green! It was still an uplifting experience.
That morning I had gotten up early and did some EFT and gratitude work. I'm hoping to 'get in the habit' of feeling grateful by deliberately focusing on it every day. And yesterday it really worked! I wandered into an absolutely ecstatic state. I was practically laughing out loud and whooping for joy after a while. Everyone else was still asleep so I whooped very quietly.
This is not my usual state of mind and it kept me buzzing all day.
Alas, I did not replicate the experience this morning. My nervous system got seriously french fried at the festival and on the chaotic drive back through the saturday night streets of San Francisco. So I slept in, got up late with the rest of my family and danced around everyone else's needs and lost my momentum. That's okay. This is a long term project.
I feel that I've already cleared out a huge space in my psyche, by doing the EFT work on old memories and emotions. Old junk from school, issues with my folks. Old guilt or shame over things I'd done years ago. I'll be setting to work on one issue and a quiet little memory will sort of pop up in the corner, patiently waiting in queue.
It isn't especially traumatic working on these things. It isn't a question of re-living the feelings, thank god. It's more a matter of just remembering them and grasping the significance of the long buried emotions.
All of this work has left me with a curiously empty feeling. Not empty in the negative sense of being meaningless or hollow or destitute. It's just that any sense of being driven, by subtle anxieties or other unexamined inner pressures has mostly faded away, leaving me standing, blinking, and wondering what I want to be doing.
I get to decide!
The process of sitting down and deciding what I want to do and who I want to be is weird. It's not the sort of thing most of us do very often. I have done it several times over the past twenty years, usually after reading some inspiring new age self help book. And some of what I sought to put in place actually manifested.
But with this new feeling of "emptiness", this increasing freedom from old emotions, and the return of all the energy it was taking to contain them, it's really really different. It has new significance.
I still have plenty of limiting, self-sabotaging thoughts to clear out, but the affirmations I'm starting to plant have a pretty good chance of sprouting in this newly composted psychic soil. I have very little doubt they will bear fruit. And when I find those little doubts, I'm tapping them away.
Cheers,
rob
They had the good sense to get us there early, as it became incredibly packed by afternoon. It was a very happy crowd, what with the recent elections and all. But it was a very big happy crowd. It became difficult to get around, as the aisles were so crowded. All the lines for food and the bathrooms were super long. It was extremely noisy too. But very green! It was still an uplifting experience.
That morning I had gotten up early and did some EFT and gratitude work. I'm hoping to 'get in the habit' of feeling grateful by deliberately focusing on it every day. And yesterday it really worked! I wandered into an absolutely ecstatic state. I was practically laughing out loud and whooping for joy after a while. Everyone else was still asleep so I whooped very quietly.
This is not my usual state of mind and it kept me buzzing all day.
Alas, I did not replicate the experience this morning. My nervous system got seriously french fried at the festival and on the chaotic drive back through the saturday night streets of San Francisco. So I slept in, got up late with the rest of my family and danced around everyone else's needs and lost my momentum. That's okay. This is a long term project.
I feel that I've already cleared out a huge space in my psyche, by doing the EFT work on old memories and emotions. Old junk from school, issues with my folks. Old guilt or shame over things I'd done years ago. I'll be setting to work on one issue and a quiet little memory will sort of pop up in the corner, patiently waiting in queue.
It isn't especially traumatic working on these things. It isn't a question of re-living the feelings, thank god. It's more a matter of just remembering them and grasping the significance of the long buried emotions.
All of this work has left me with a curiously empty feeling. Not empty in the negative sense of being meaningless or hollow or destitute. It's just that any sense of being driven, by subtle anxieties or other unexamined inner pressures has mostly faded away, leaving me standing, blinking, and wondering what I want to be doing.
I get to decide!
The process of sitting down and deciding what I want to do and who I want to be is weird. It's not the sort of thing most of us do very often. I have done it several times over the past twenty years, usually after reading some inspiring new age self help book. And some of what I sought to put in place actually manifested.
But with this new feeling of "emptiness", this increasing freedom from old emotions, and the return of all the energy it was taking to contain them, it's really really different. It has new significance.
I still have plenty of limiting, self-sabotaging thoughts to clear out, but the affirmations I'm starting to plant have a pretty good chance of sprouting in this newly composted psychic soil. I have very little doubt they will bear fruit. And when I find those little doubts, I'm tapping them away.
Cheers,
rob
Moorea
Sand and Petals
Originally uploaded by Robbi Baba.
I just dug up some old photos from our trip to Moorea last year and posted them (with comments) on Flickr.
This was the last stop on our three month journey. We basically got a free stopover on Tahiti and decided to make a holiday of it. I had this idea that we'd just rest, bask in the hot tropical sand and plosh about in the water, and arrive home rested and tan after fleeing the onset of New Zealand's winter.
We knew it would be really expensive. Each night's lodging was way more than two weeks in Thailand. And we weren't going out to any resturants! We'd read that one hamburger and coke would cost about $45.00!
But how often do you get to go to French Polynesia?
So we went for it and had a lovely time. We stayed at three (very) different places and each had it's own charms.
We were a little disappointed by the coolness of the water--it was winter after all. And the coral wasn't looking too good. That was a bit sad.
But we saw lots of cool fish, got to see yet another culture (or two). Of course I've already written about it on this here blog. June 2005 I think.
But check out our photos if you like. (This one taken by Krista).
Just in time for our own chilly weather here.
Pineapple God
Pineapple God and Rob
Originally uploaded by Robbi Baba.
Our first day on Moorea. We bicycled over to the "Chinese store" (for some reason all the food stores on the island were called that. We discovered they have fresh bagettes delivered two or three times a day! And NZ butter! Yum! And French cheese and wine. And NZ apples too, which happened to be in season. And that's about all we ate for the next 8 days.
Dreamy Waters
Dreamy Waters
Originally uploaded by Robbi Baba.
The water really was this color. It really seemed to be glowing too. I'd never seen the like.
Sunday, November 05, 2006
The Secret and EFT
A friend of mine challenged my recent posting of "The Secret to Riches ~ Visualization Tool" google video. He said he wasn't sure if it was supposed to be a joke, or maybe a parody of new age materialism.
Fair enough. After watching it again it does seem a bit silly. Especially out of context of the original program.
What I had meant to post was a link to the full hour and a half film "The Secret" (but I had trouble finding it again). At any rate, if you'd like to see it Click Here.
The film is about the law of attraction. Some of the folks who were in What The Bleep Do We Know are featured. I think it's worth watching and wrestling with any resistances you might have.
Personally, I think the time is getting late for conventional political and 'scientific' solutions to save our collective ass. I think this film (cheesy though it might be in parts) represents an evolution in human consciousness. An empowering. I'm now inclined to believe just as much in the law of attraction as in that other crazy law of gravitation.
My big project right now is to combine intentional use of this law of attraction with erasing my negative unconscious and conflicting emotional programming, using a technique called EFT - emotional freedom technique. Erase and replace is my mantra these days.
The basic idea is that it doesn't work well to stand in our house and recite affirmations when all around us the walls are scrawled with ugly grafitti such as: you're a failure life is hard you have to work hard for everything you aren't special failure! things never work out for you you never finish anything you don't deserve it if you're rich you'll lose all your friends
etc.. EFT is about scrubbing those walls clean. It turns out to be pretty easy! And you don't even have to relive all the old trauma. I love it.
I'll post more on EFT soon. Or you can click here for the web site.
Rob
Fair enough. After watching it again it does seem a bit silly. Especially out of context of the original program.
What I had meant to post was a link to the full hour and a half film "The Secret" (but I had trouble finding it again). At any rate, if you'd like to see it Click Here.
The film is about the law of attraction. Some of the folks who were in What The Bleep Do We Know are featured. I think it's worth watching and wrestling with any resistances you might have.
Personally, I think the time is getting late for conventional political and 'scientific' solutions to save our collective ass. I think this film (cheesy though it might be in parts) represents an evolution in human consciousness. An empowering. I'm now inclined to believe just as much in the law of attraction as in that other crazy law of gravitation.
My big project right now is to combine intentional use of this law of attraction with erasing my negative unconscious and conflicting emotional programming, using a technique called EFT - emotional freedom technique. Erase and replace is my mantra these days.
The basic idea is that it doesn't work well to stand in our house and recite affirmations when all around us the walls are scrawled with ugly grafitti such as: you're a failure life is hard you have to work hard for everything you aren't special failure! things never work out for you you never finish anything you don't deserve it if you're rich you'll lose all your friends
etc.. EFT is about scrubbing those walls clean. It turns out to be pretty easy! And you don't even have to relive all the old trauma. I love it.
I'll post more on EFT soon. Or you can click here for the web site.
Rob
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