Welcome to the Friday Random 10, StreetProphet's weekly music discussion group. Grab a beverage of your choice from today's Happy Hour thread, pull up a comfy chair, and start thumbing through the records, 8-tracks, tapes, CD's and mp3's lying around. If you're not into music, here's some noise-canceling earplugs- they'll filter out the music while you stay and chat with us about other stuff :-).

So, on Sunday I will be 30. Which, if anyone's wondering, I'm thrilled about. I've been working for the last 8 years in a field in which most of my colleagues were at least 30-40 years older than me (it's gotten younger as I've gotten older; I'm still younger than most, but late-30s is no longer uncommon) and damned if they were going to listen to anything this little blond girl had to say.

In any case, on Sunday I will be 30, so I figured this was a good time for a retrospective ...

Welcome to the Friday Random 10, StreetProphet's weekly music discussion group. Grab a beverage of your choice from today's  Happy Hour thread, pull up a comfy chair, and start thumbing through the records, 8-tracks, tapes, CD's and mp3's lying around. If you're not into music, here's some noise-canceling earplugs- they'll filter out the music while you stay and chat with us about other stuff :-).

This week: Let's be truly random!

Welcome to the Friday Random 10, Street Prophets' weekly music discussion group. Grab a beverage of your choice from today's  Happy Hour thread, pull up a comfy chair, and start thumbing through the records, 8-tracks, tapes, CDs and mp3's lying around. If you're not into music, here's some noise-canceling earplugs—they'll filter out the music while you stay and chat with us about other stuff :-).

So, Expat's birthday is coming up on Monday and I realized I could use that as an excuse to use up the Valentine's draft I'd been saving.

The premise is simple: if you're like me, certain songs remind you of certain people. So, today, pick one person (or animal, or place, or group, or situation...) that you really, really love, and dedicate ten songs that remind you of that person (or animal, or place, or group, or situation...) and how you feel about them.

So, dirkster42 (who was running the book club) hasn't been around in about three weeks, and appleblossombeck didn't post the June Book Club (The Golden Compass) last week, and no one read The Years of Rice and Salt when I posted my book club in May, so I'm taking matters into my own hands, because man, the suspense is killing me.

Here's what I propose as an interim measure:

Sometime during the first week of July, I will post a short diary inviting discussion of both the previous two Book Club books, and we can talk about them then, and also decide how and if we want to continue the Book Club.

Sound good? A bit more below the fold ...

... with apologies to Rain, but it's 11:00 here in the Forgotten Time Zone ...

Hey, I don't know about you, but I could use some coffee!!

So, here in The Q it's sunny and 75°, heading for a high of 90°.Scout got to chase prairie dogs this morning on her walk, and is therefore currently flat.

Welcome to the Friday Random 10, Street Prophets' weekly music discussion group. Grab a beverage of your choice from today's Happy Hour, pull up a comfy chair, and start thumbing through the records, 8-tracks, tapes, CD's and mp3's lying around. Go ahead and hum, sing, or tap your fingers on your knees... you know you want to. If you're not into music, here's some noise-canceling earplugs- they'll filter out our music while you stay and chat with us about other topics that interest you.

Promoted by PD

Welcome to Prophecy Street's Monthly Book Club!

For May, our book is The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson.

(Coming up on June 4: The Golden Compass/Northern Lights by Philip Pullman, led by appleblossombeck.)

This is Part I of a pair of diaries ... "Faith" is probably a far more interesting diary than "Atheism," but I couldn't write Part 2 without first writing Part 1.

So, lately I've found myself becoming an angry atheist. (If you're going to take offense at reading a diary by an angry atheist, you should probably just stop now.)

If you've been reading The Years of Rice and Salt, you've probably started getting overwhelmed by the various characters who appear and disappear and reappear over the course of time. This book obviously subscribes strongly to the theory of reincarnation that says that people who are important in our lives now have been important in our lives for generations.

Several years ago, when I first read The Years of Rice and Salt, I created this helpful guide for myself to help me keep track of who was who. Follow me below the fold for a "Who's Who" chart and a few questions to ponder along the way.

Here's that "fresh thread" I was suggesting. PD

I remember very clearly the day that I learned that some people cared what color other people's skin might be. I was eight and in third grade, and up to that point in my life I thought brown skin was about as interesting and important as, say, red hair. Not a lot of people had it, and no one in my family, so it was a bit different and exotic, but it didn't mean anything to me particularly.

In my year at school, out of about 50 kids there were 3 black girls. I liked two of them well enough (I was never a very social child with a ton of friends, but I like to think I'm friendly enough), but one of them I did not get along with (which is a very long story involving childhood best-friend jealousies the previous year, and is not relevant here).

One day, early in third grade, I had been sitting with those three girls when one of them went to use the bathroom. When she returned, she couldn't find something she'd had (a barrette, I think) and the girl who didn't like me told her I'd hidden it. She looked at me with very large, sad eyes, and said, "What are you, some sort of racist?" I had to look at it in the dictionary. In twelve years of schooling, she never spoke to me again.

This diary series is intended to be a safe and comfortable space for members to explore healthy lifestyle changes and find support. There is no one diet, no one program to follow. No matter if you are currently following a weight loss and exercise program or thinking of introducing changes in your life, all are welcome!

Being a home-improvement-show addict who loves "Trading Spaces" (and, even more so, "Moving Up"), I'd been seeing a lot of commercials for a new TLC show called "I Can Make You Thin", in which he claims "I can make you thin, and I can do it through the television!"

Expat was dubious about this, because the host (Paul McKenna) is a British hypnotist, and frankly that made me dubious too. This man was going to hypnotize me through the TV?

However, I have to have the TV or radio on to fall asleep [it drowns out the noise of my CPAP machine] and last Sunday night there was nothing else on, so I flipped over out of curiosity.

And found out that the first episode was actually about a subject near and dear to my heart: mindful eating.

Someone asked over in the Paganism Roundtable about the ongoing schedule, so here's an updated, cleaned-up version of it. If you've agreed to host or participate in a Roundtable, please select a date! If you'd like to participate in a Roundtable already scheduled, please contact the person in charge of it.

It's come to my attention while reading over comments lately  that not everyone is really familiar with all the different faith traditions represented here on Prophecy Street.

In the spirit of building community and knowing our neighbors (both here and in the Real World), I present the Weekly Faith Roundtable.

Each Wednesday (beginning February 20), the adherents of a particular faith tradition represented around here will take center stage to discuss their religion and their answers to questions surrounding it. Outsiders are (of course!) welcome to read, learn, and ask questions.

Follow me below the fold to sign up ...