Questionable Taste?

I have never been on the cutting edge of ... well, anything.  My taste in music, for example, runs from the generic to the just-that-side-of-embarrassing. Once, when we parked our car in a slightly dodgy lot on Manhattan's west side, a thief broke in and stole all my husband's CDs and left every single one of mine. Abba Gold I can sort of understand but the soundtrack to "The Heights"? Come on!

My taste in literature and TV shows is equally off-beat.  As a tween I was obsessed with MASH and Quincy. I wanted to marry Alan Alda and be a Medical Examiner.  When my academic strengths and need for sleep steered me away from a career in medicine I took to reading murder mysteries and watching crime dramas (with the odd Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place episode thrown in for good measure). My latest obsession - I'm sure I've already said - is with Scandinavian mystery writers: Jo Nesbo, Henning Mankell, Karin Fossum, Jussi Adler-Olsen. When we got a dog recently, we named her Ziva after the kick-ass Mossad agent from NCIS. (Sadly, she was a biter and had to go back to the breeder. I was going to blog about our grief and call it "Sitting Ziva", but didn't want to overplay the Jewish card).

So imagine my delight this weekend when reading an article about the Oscar-nominee June Squibb in the Style section of the NY Times when she described a typical night for her involving "watching TV ("Game of Thrones," "NCIS") or reading mysteries written by Jo Nesbo and other Scandinavian writers."!

Glass half empty: I am right on par with an octogenarian.

Glass half full: I share the sophisticated tastes of an Oscar-nominated, salty, hard-working, winsome dame of cinema.

Going to celebrate with Harry Hole while listening to my latest download, Pearl Jam. Have you heard of them?

Serenity Now!

It’s a new year, which means clean slates and resolutions and all that good stuff.

I tend to tie my overly aspirational self-improvement efforts to the beginning of the school year-- as opposed to January 1-- but this year I’m inclined to double dip.

While I didn’t think I could go broader than “figure out what you want to do with your life,” for 2014 I’m hoping that the secret to happiness is hiding somewhere in the interplay of these two bits of text.   

 

The Serenity Prayer:

(God), grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

 courage to change the things I can,

 and wisdom to know the difference.

 

Birthday card I received from my parents last June:

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit.

Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

 

I haven’t quite parsed out how to live my life serenely with courage and wisdom but I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to let go of petty small-potato things like how much it bothers me that the serenity prayer leaves off the “the” in front of courage and wisdom.

Stay tuned.

Happy and healthy to all….