Buffalo Chicken Macaroni & Cheese via Noble Pig

Recipe

Beef with Snow Peas from the Pioneer Woman Cooks

For the recipe to this deliciousness, check out The Pioneer Woman Cooks.

Homework

We are what we think

We Are What We Think

---

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. Speak or act with an impure mind and trouble will follow you, like the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. Speak or act with a pure mind and happiness will follow you, as your shadow unshaken.

In this world, hate never yet dispelled hate. Only love dispels hate. This is the Law, ancient and inexhaustible. We are what we think.

-- Lord Buddha

Shoes

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
Oscar Wilde

Punctuation

Kur te jesh merzitur shume

KUR TE JESH MERZITUR SHUME

Ketu s' do te jem, do jem larguar;
Ne toke i tretur si te tjeret,
Ne kafenene e preferuar
Nuk do me shohin kamarieret.

Dhe neper udhet ku kam ecur,
S'do ndihet kolla ime e thate,
Mbi varrin tim do te rrije i heshtur
Nje qipariz si murg i ngrate.

Ti do trishtohesh atehere,
Se s'do me kesh ne dhome gjalle,
Dhe, kur ne xham te fryje ere,
Do qash me eren dalengadale.

Po kur te jesh merzitur shume.
Ne raft te librave kerkome,
Atje do te jem i fshehur une,
Ne ndonje fjale a ndonje shkronje

Mjafton qe librin pak ta heqesh
Dhe une do zbres, do vij pas teje;
Ti si dikur me mall do qeshesh,
Si nje blerim pas nje rrekeje.

Ibiza, Spain

SUNSET

Ibiza, Spain

SUNRISE

Funny

Be Happy!

ATTITUDE by: Charles Swindoll

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.

Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home.

The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.

And so it is with you... we are in charge of our attitudes.

The Sonnets to Orpheus: XIII

Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were
behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.
For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it all will your heart survive.

Be forever dead in Eurydice-more gladly arise
into the seamless life proclaimed in your song.
Here, in the realm of decline, among momentary days,
be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang.

Be-and yet know the great void where all things begin,
the infinite source of your own most intense vibration,
so that, this once, you may give it your perfect assent.

To all that is used-up, and to all the muffled and dumb
creatures in the world's full reserve, the unsayable sums,
joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count.


Translated by Stephen Mitchell

I am not young enough to know everything! Oscar Wilde

Dritero Agolli - Pelegrin

Pelegrin

Unë jam prej kohësh pelegrin
Udhëtar në vendin e shpresës së thyer
Jam ndarë padashur nga karvani im
Mes shtigjeve nga vapa e shirat gërryer

Kërkoj karvanin tim në rërë e në shpat
karvanin që e ka ndërruar drejtimin me kohë
Ndaj në udhë jam krejt i humbur, jam fillikat
Me shami të grisur lidhur në kokë

Për ujë buza ime u bë zhur
Dhe sytë më shpojnë nga shterrja e lotit
Me duhet të arrijë karvanin e tretur qëkur
Çapitur mes vapës, mes shiut e të ftohtit

Unë jam prej kohësh pelegrin
Shtegtar i karvanit të humbur
Dhe bart në kurriz një premtim
Të dhënë në hirin e gjyshërve të mundur.

Word of the Day

circumspect • \SER-kum-spekt\ • adjective

: careful to consider all circumstances and possible consequences : prudent

"I'm not afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens." Woody Allen

Word of the Day

acrimonious

• adjective angry and bitter.

At the Fishhouses

At the Fishhouses

by Elizabeth Bishop

Although it is a cold evening,
down by one of the fishhouses
an old man sits netting,
his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,
a dark purple-brown,
and his shuttle worn and polished.
The air smells so strong of codfish
it makes one's nose run and one's eyes water.
The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs
and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up
to storerooms in the gables
for the wheelbarrows to be pushed up and down on.
All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea,
swelling slowly as if considering spilling over,
is opaque, but the silver of the benches,
the lobster pots, and masts, scattered
among the wild jagged rocks,
is of an apparent translucence
like the small old buildings with an emerald moss
growing on their shoreward walls.
The big fish tubs are completely lined
with layers of beautiful herring scales
and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered
with creamy iridescent coats of mail,
with small iridescent flies crawling on them.
Up on the little slope behind the houses,
set in the sparse bright sprinkle of grass,
is an ancient wooden capstan,
cracked, with two long bleached handles
and some melancholy stains, like dried blood,
where ironwork has rusted.

The old man accepts a Lucky Strike.
He was a friend of my grandfather.
We talk of the decline in the population
and of codfish and herring
while he waits for a herring boat to come in.
There are sequins on his vest and on his thumb.
He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty,
from unnumbered fish with that black old knife,
the blade of which is almost worn away.

Down at the water's edge, at the place
where they haul up the boats, up the long ramp
descending into the water, thin silver
tree trunks are laid horizontally
across the gray stones, down and down
at intervals of four or five feet.
Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
element bearable to no mortal,
to fish and to seals. . . One seal particularly
I have seen here evening after evening.
He was curious about me. He was interested in music;
like me a believer in total immersion,
so I used to sing him Baptist hymns.
I also sang "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God."
He stood up in the water and regarded me
steadily, moving his head a little.
Then he would disappear, then suddenly emerge
almost in the same spot, with a sort of shrug
as if it were against his better judgment.
Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
the clear gray icy water . . . Back, behind us,
the dignified tall firs begin.
Bluish, associating with their shadows,
a million Christmas trees stand
waiting for Christmas. The water seems suspended
above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones.
I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,
slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
icily free above the stones,
above the stones and then the world.
If you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.
If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.

“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.” Oscar Wilde