Been a while since I’ve put up a posting, things have been fairly quiet lately. Work is going well. I’ve been working full-time with my favorite client for the last month or so, knock on wood it continues! I really hate bouncing between clients, so it’s a treat when I get to focus on just one for a while.

I enjoyed the new Dr. Strange movie, but know it wasn’t up to everyone’s tastes. 🙂

Not been doing any quilting lately, but I’ve started the Jack Sparrow diamond dotz. So many dark colors! I’m actually finding this one a bit hard to do since I can’t see the lines for the squares in the dark background. I gave this handy little template a try and it works great!

You fill in blank spots first, then remove it and fill in the rest. With the others in place, it makes it much easier to figure out where to put the rest of them. It would be easier if I worked with round dotz, but I like the square ones and they need to be more precise in your placement of them.

A local duck pair decided to lay their eggs by my front door! It’s a pretty good spot, behind a clump of tall grass, in the corner with some cover from the rain under the eaves. I’m pretty sure they didn’t like the foot traffic by the front door, and she didn’t appreciate me taking this picture (see if you can spot the mom):

Spotted some eggshells last week, so the babies have hatched and they’ve moved on! I’d love to have a pic of them, but as I don’t know when they hatched I really don’t feel like scrolling through all the security camera footage trying to spot them leaving. 🙂

I’ve got a trip to Thailand coming up. It’s a women’s retreat with several travel agencies teaming up for the trip. It features a daily meditation session, and a visit to some of the Buddhist shrines in the area, plus a couple of island tours and show one night.

Buddhism has been on my radar for many years now. I decided with the upcoming trip now might be a good time to jump in and study it a bit. Buddhism isn’t a religion like we think of in the US. It’s more a philosophy than anything. There’s no deity to worship; Buddha is a title, not a name. There have been 3 recognized Buddhas, and there’s a lot of info out there on it. That’s both bad and good. Good, because there’s lots of info to get you started, bad because it’s freaking overwhelming! There are many different flavors of Buddhism, depending on who’s writings they’re studying. Most incorporate some kind of meditation, but not all them (that really surprised me).

There are 3 different local groups you can join, from incredibly laid-back t-shirt and sweats/shorts to very formal wearing suits/dresses to attend service. Unfortunately all of them meet downtown, and I hate driving downtown. But they all offer zoom sessions for discussions, book clubs, group meditation, etc.

One of the main things I really wanted to figure out is the best way to meditate, and I think this is one of the best videos I’ve ever seen on the subject (you might want to turn on subtitles):

I just love his sense of humor and it’s such a simple explanation. 😁 He’s been working with several Neuroscientists for years to map how regular meditation changes the brain. They’ve captured some super detailed MRIs and have mapped the actual physical changes to the brain itself. I got one of his books, “The Joy of Living” and there’s a discussion in there on quantum physics! Didn’t expect that!!

He leads the online Tergar Meditation organization, and if getting started meditating is something that interests you, I’d recommend their intro course. It’s free, and they are short, easy-to-understand sessions: https://beta.tergar.org/courses/intro-to-meditation/

You can also take a free online course from Harvard on Buddhism in general: https://pll.harvard.edu/course/buddhism-through-its-scriptures?delta=2

In short, there’s a LOT out there! I started with this book: No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners. All in all I’ve got a fairly good understanding of the absolute basics of Buddhism, and have been working on daily meditation practice for a while now. Enough that I feel I can survive daily meditation sessions on the retreat (even with some wicked jet lag), and have a bit of a clue when I visit the temples in Thailand. 😁🤞

As always, a couple of cute pup pics that make me smile:

I’ve never seen Nyx do this before! She just decided to park herself on this perch and look out the windows while I worked. ❤️ That mess in the background on my desk is my work desktop computer that I had just upgraded the RAM. I wanted to make sure it booted and loaded the new memory without issue when Nyx pulled this little perch stunt. Frankly, I’m amazed she stayed where she was long enough for me to get a couple of pics! 😆

Take care and hugs to everyone!