Day One-hundred-and-nineteen: Running on empty

I like multiple meaning titles. The direct reference is to my Prius being on its last fuel gauge bar for the last week, but then I've only used it to drive locally, including going to Safeway twice today. The indirect reference is, at least today, not having a lot to write about. Oh well, a short entry every once in a while may not be such a bad thing. The only real problem is that it gives me fewer chances to weave in my tag line of Life after Layoff, at least more cleverly.

Yesterday I bought some Indian eggplant and used it to make some Gerson Ratatouille this morning. It was good to have some hot food, but I found out that Indian eggplant has a skin between the Japanese/Chinese eggplant and the more traditional eggplant. Now the traditional eggplant I know to peel before I cook it. I now know the same about Indian eggplant, but I ate it tough skin and all. Better, I just won't buy Indian eggplant again.

I also made some Food for Life gingerbread that tasted so good I ended up eating about half of it. This batch was too moist both because I used a measuring cup that didn't have a 1 3/4 cup line so I approximated. Then I probably undercooked it. Undercooking a cake-like food that doesn't have any fat or egg isn't dangerous, it could be messy though. It was cooked enough that the whole wheat pastry flour was done. I obviously liked it.

In case this blog has other readers than my direct family, I copying an email I wrote yesterday about things that have been occurring after I normally write my daily entry.

I've transferred my meditation guides to my iPod. This has given me new possibilities and I've been taking advantage of them. Tonight and Friday night I sat in the sky chair in the dark, well, as dark as it gets in a town. (Back in a canyon in Pacifica, it is darker than it ever got on a Fremont cul-de-sac but we never set up the sky chairs in Fremont.)

Last night it got so late, I did it directly in bed. It probably helped me sleep better.

But the reason I was inspired to write this email this late was the two very different night time sky chair meditations. Friday night the sky was very clear and I could see stars through the branches of the willow tree. It was meditative just to watch them. The only problem was that I left just one house light on. It wasn't distracting enough to get up and turn it off but I learned my lesson.

Tonight the fog had rolled in but with the street lights on Ranier, the "back of the" house lights on Glacier it was still quite bright even though I did turn off all the lights in my house. This meant that I wasn't stumbling around in the dark. When I finally came in, which has consistently been after about 50 minutes, I noticed how bright my supposedly dark house was. It is amazing how many LEDs I have telling me the time, telling me the temperature of the wine. I suppose all of the AC adaptors' lights are LEDs as well. Then there is my modem and router. I don't have any need for the night lights that I no longer have plugged in, even on moonless nights like this one appears to be.

At the end of my meditating, if that is really what it can be called, I thought of another series of topics for my Memories of Marilyn: "Company trips and trips on companies." We really did get a lot of travel in. I can't begin to imagine what we would be doing now. I'm falling behind in my travel.