The Monday Mashup is an experiment, designed to get my creative juices flowing. I get a random word and a random number, and I write a list based on that mashup.
This week’s mashup: Six Fares
This photo is here not because it relates to fares but because I think it’s lovely.
1. Farmgirl Fare
A fun side-effect of doing the Monday Mashups is discovering new sites or people. Perusing the interwebs’ myriad options for “fare” brought me to Farmgirl Fare, a blog that captured me with its daily “doses of cute” via photos of the animals that inhabit the farmland with the blog’s author. And then I read the author’s bio blurb, and was even more fascinated. Here’s what she says:
When I was 26, I sold my little bakery cafe, packed up 200 boxes of books & antiques, & waved goodbye to my native California. Armed with a very basic knowledge of gardening, an overenthusiastic sense of adventure, & lots of naivete, I ended up on a 280-acre, 140-year-old farm in the middle of nowhere. I became cook, gardener, shepherd, farmhand, vet, surrogate mom, wildlife expert, sheep midwife & animal undertaker. My prep school education & graphic design background were useless.
I love a good tale of self-reinvention. Visit the site if for no other reason than the lambs are completely adorable.
2. FareStart
Taglined “Great Food. Better Lives”, the Seattle organization known as FareStart is helping people through food. It offers culinary training alongside life skills training and employment assistance for homeless and disadvantaged individuals. Plus, FareStart supplies meals to homeless shelters and childcare centers in the Seattle area 365 days a year. Food as a catalyst for change. I like it.
3. Farewell
“Let’s not unman each other – part at once; / All farewells should be sudden, when forever, / Else they make an eternity of moments, / And clog the last sad sands of life with tears.” –Lord Byron (achingly true and beautiful)
4. The How Are You Faring Project
Since asking “How do you fare?” is synonymous with “How are you doing,” I thought this entry fit. The How Are You Doing Project, part audio art project and part fascination with other people’s lives (from the mundane to the funny to the heartwrenching), provides a toll-free number to call and answer that one question: How are you doing? The responses are recorded and displayed anonymously on the website, creating an audio mosaic of experiences and thoughts. The last update was Thanksgiving weekend; I hope this project continues.
5. Because where else online are seafarers going to hang out?
Did you know that there is a social networking site specifically for Seafarers? Yeah, there totally is. It’s called MyShip. It even has its own “Shipspedia.” I love the internet.
6. Busfare
I like looking up words in the Urban Dictionary. It’s like a wikipedia of slang. Turns out that someone uses “busfare” as a synonym for “Oh, that sucks,” or “Bummer.” The busfare entry says, “Used to describe sumthing that is really shady or bad… made up by abran one nite when he kept saying that he needed busfare for his ride home[.]” So if I said, “Damnit, my mouse button isn’t working and it’s taking twice as long to get this post published because of it,” an appropriate response could be, “Dude. Busfare.” I’m highly amused by this, and plan to use this newfound phrase liberally in conversation.
The fact that no one except for a couple of Urban Dictionary users will understand what I mean? Busfare, man.
Your turn!
How do you fare today? What fares come to mind for you?
The Monday Mashup is an experiment, designed to get my creative juices flowing. I get a random word and a random number, and I write a list based on that mashup. I’m not going to require myself to make the list perfect or expert–just requiring myself to do it consistently. At least for now.
This week’s mashup: Ten Kings
1. Kings of Leon: I know Sex on Fire was overplayed–but I love it madly anyway. It helps that I discovered it after it peaked in popularity. The Kings of Leon album, Only By The Night
, is a frequent while-I’m-working listen.
2. Drink!: If you’re in college, or just looking for a clever way to binge drink with your friends, you might try Kings. I recommend it only in larger groups, lest you cross that fine line between “yay fun drinking games” and “getting far too close and personal with whatever toilet happens to be nearby.”
3. What’s in room 237? The Shining is a really scary movie. I’m told that it is also a really scary book, though I have to take others’ word on that, having not read it myself. But I do know that without Stephen King, we would have no iconic image of Jack Nicholson busting through the door in a murderous craze and announcing, “Heeeeere’s Johnny!” So thank you for that, Mr. King. And for scaring the bejeezus out of me via circus clown.
4. Ben E. King
: One of those “Hey, I know that song!” artists, Ben E. King’s voice is front and center on many recognizable songs of yesteryear, such as Stand By Me and This Magic Moment.
5. I have a dream! Martin Luther King, Jr. No further explanation needed, yeah?
6. The Kings of Pop and Rock: Say what you will about their personal lives, but anyone who can make a choreographed boogie with the undead into a worldwide, enduring phenomenon or turn a bell-bottomed jumpsuit-with-cape ensemble into a symbol of Cool has some legendary prowess backing their eccentricity.
7. The Prince of Wales: Technically not a king yet, the heir to Great Britain’s throne, Prince Charles of Wales, nonetheless comes to mind when I think of “kings.”
8. Not my Big Wheel: I had a Big Wheel bike called a King Cobra when I was a child, and I thought it was awesome. But the actual King Cobra is pretty awesome as well. Did you know they grow to be 13 feet long and live for a couple of decades? Wowza.
9. Checkmate. Wikipedia refers to the king as the most important piece in a game of chess. I always referred to it as “the piece with the little cross thing on its head.” My title is significantly less regal.
10. Simba: Leave it to Disney to render the King of the Jungle a big ball of animated cuteness accompanied by the lilting melodies of an Elton John smash hit. I present The Lion King
. Hakuna Matata!
The Monday Mashup is an experiment, designed to get my creative juices flowing. I get a random word and a random number, and I write a list based on that mashup. I’m not going to require myself to make the list perfect or expert–just requiring myself to do it consistently. At least for now.
This week’s mashup: Three Choices (that I make each day)
1. PC or Mac?
I grew up on Atari and then on PCs. We never had an Apple computer in our household, and I avoided using them in school because PCs were my comfort zone. I got to know Apple during undergrad when the folks I worked for during the summers (and after graduation) used Macs exclusively. But I still favored PCs.
But then I got a Dell Inspiron 1720 that was equal parts pink bubble gum beauty and spawn of Satan. I designed it to be my dream computer and it mocked me with its pretty exterior and clusterbumble of Vista issues inside. I spent more time fixing it than I spent using it. And around the same time, Apple came out with the “Hi, I’m a Mac” commercial series… oh, Apple. You had me at “I’m a Mac.”
I got my first iMac early this year, and it was passionate love at first type. For all of the PC folks who say, “Tell me why Macs are better than PCs, and give me a reason other than ‘It just works,’” I say, “How sad you’ve forgotten what life can be like when you have a computer that just works.” I could not run my business if I had to deal with the headaches of Windows. So I still own my beautiful pink PC… I just use it as a backup, a Hulu/Netflix display, and as an in-case machine, should I wind up with a client who needs something generated via PC. But I choose my iMac as my main machine–enthusiastically.
And I love those Mac commercials so much I want to re-convert all over again when I see them. Marketing genius.
2. Coffee or Tea?
Both! But in the morning, it’s decidedly coffee. I have only one mug of coffee each day, but I cannot start my day without it. Not because of the caffeine, but because of the ritual around it. I pour the water into the coffee pot as my dogs eat their morning meal. The aroma of dark roast coffee wafts out to greet me as it starts to brew. The pot finishes its brew cycle as I let my dogs outside after they’re done eating and just as my morning toast pops up from the toaster.
I doctor up my coffee in a particular way, too. Since I can no longer afford the (exorbitant) luxury of Starbucks fancy coffees every day, I make my own version. I use three Tablespoons of hot cocoa, one packet of Stevia powder, and two Tablespoons of Peppermint creamer in my mug of coffee, and stir it all up. It is heaven in the morning.
Throughout the rest of the day, I have a variety of teas, often using my Libre because I like to watch the tea brew and change color and swirl. But in the morning, I choose that one mug of coffee that makes the world all right.
3. Early riser or night owl?
Whether this is a choice is debatable. I think there’s a strong built-in urge to be one or the other, and I think you can tailor that urge, but you never really get rid of it. I’m a night owl. Always have been. My body does not know the rhythm of getting tired as night draws. I tend to get burst of productive energy that hits around 10pm and lasts until around 2am Eastern.
I really like the early morning hours, though. There is something magic about the hours when the earth around me is just waking from its slumber, when the birds sing to a quiet neighborhood, as if they always get the Time To Wake Up memo an hour before anyone else. But it’s nigh impossible for me to get up at that time and stay awake all day. If I sleep for 8 hours and wake around 10am, I’m golden. If I wake before 9ish, no matter how long I’ve slept, I’m exhausted within a couple of hours, and throughout the day.
So I’m a night owl. I’m experimenting with trying to be a morning person, but so far, nothing has been as effective for making my waking hours, well, actually wakeful as being a night owl.
Your turn!
Are you a PC or a Mac? Do you favor coffee or tea? Do you share my night owl tendencies or rise with the early birds? What other daily choices to you make?
I’m Marissa, can-do-ologist, perpetual Curious George, and daily adventurer. 
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