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Sasha Stone

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Playa Del Carmen, Day One

by Sasha Stone on September 1, 2010

My mother decided she wanted to take a vacation to Mexico with her three daughters and their three daughters. The objective: use up air miles (plane tickets were free) and relax in the heat and humidity, not to mention tequila and occasional ceviche. The plane right out was hard core. A connecting flight in Dallas, with a four hour layover, and then a fairly calm flight out to Cancun. After that, things got a little more hairy.

Here’s the thing about Mexico. We Americans — scratch that — we gringos can sometimes seem like the ugly American when we travel to Mexico. I always feel weird and guilty being here because it is such a poor country economically — yet rich in so many other ways — and everyone wants you, the mark, to help them make ends meet. That means, you are what you buy here. That is always a little unnerving, especially at the all-inclusive resorts (we will be heading to one mid-week).

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Sarah Palin Still Sucks

by Sasha Stone on September 1, 2010

Any opportunity to make fun is okay by me.

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Why I Like Code

by Sasha Stone August 26, 2010 How to Blog
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Ten years ago I taught myself to read and write html. All of these years later I’m fumbling my way through CSS, PHP and MYSQL. I’m learning as if I were plunked into a foreign country and made to learn their language by simply jumping in and struggling through misinterpretations and frustration. I am not someone who thinks in any logical way about anything. I am completely lacking in common sense, and all of my educational background — to the tune of a student loan that is upwards of $100 grand — is in the arts. Therefore it seems kind of contradictory that I would love code. But I do. Somehow. It is the same impulse that had me taking apart an iPod once and putting in my own toilet. It is my favorite refrain from the forgotten David Mamet/Alec Baldwin/Tony Hopkins movie The Edge, “what one man can do [...]

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Hypnotic Crepe Preparation

by Sasha Stone August 25, 2010 FOODIEDOM

Posted on a great site called Gourmet Worrier – crepe making in Barcelona:

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Watching Movie with Emma: Mean Girls

by Sasha Stone August 25, 2010 Misc
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Every mother of a 12 year old girl should sit down and watch Mean Girls.  It is the fictional representation of the great book, Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence by way of Tina Fey, who morphed it into a really funny, penetrating movie. Mean Girls doesn’t preach hatin’. In fact, it does anything but – it even sympathizes with the mean girls rather than indulge some of our need to take down the pretty and popular girls. All the same, there are mean girls in high school. It is just the way things are. Boys are silly and immature and girls tend to get mean. This meanness isn’t something they understand. But it is there. It is partly the power that comes along with being really beautiful. In the teenage world, being pretty elevates you to the top of [...]

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Beware of Rattlesnake Bites

by Sasha Stone August 20, 2010 Nature
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I have lived in California all of my life and I’ve only seen a rattler a few times. And thank god, have never been bitten by one. When I was a kid, I lived in Topanga Canyon and we would spend much of our days riding our ponies through the firebreaks in the dusty hills around our beautiful home – if only my mom had realized the value of that place and bought it for a mere $90,000. Alas, it is now worth over $1 mil. Anyway, we spent a lot of time outdoors. My daughter spends most of her time indoors. She does not know anything about the natural world as I did. We literally played in the dirt and we walked, rode or biked everywhere. It was a different time. Never did we get bitten by rattlesnakes. But I am always terrified of them. Always. Anyway, I learned [...]

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Solved the Mystery

by Sasha Stone August 18, 2010 Misc
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I was watching my traffic because it seemed to be spiking a bit.  When it does that it’s almost always an accident.  They found the site because they were actually looking for posts about the Bachelorette or Lindsay Lohan or Heidi Montag.  I have written a few of those.  But lately, one post of mine, an old post about yoga, kept getting hits.  At first I thought it was because there was a link to “nude yoga.”  I kept thinking about it and wondering why there were so many people hitting that one page.  So I did a search first for the actual link.  Nothing.  Then I did a search for my name, Sasha Stone.  There are now quite a few Sasha Stones.  I didn’t know many growing up. I am Facebook friends with a really sweet young girl in England. I feel protective of her.  And there is a [...]

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Dr. Laura Quits

by Sasha Stone August 18, 2010 THE WEIRDNESS OF LIFE
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Full disclosure admission: I have been listening to Dr. Laura off and on for many years.  Many many years.  Even though I am one of the “bad people,” according to her code of ethics: single parent, not married, had baby out of wedlock.  I did stay home to raise my kid so in that way she would approve of my lifestyle.  I’m a bleeding heart liberal but I’m not going to lie and say I didn’t get much from Dr. Laura’s show over the years.  I just tuned out the political stuff or anything I disagreed with.  I found much of what she said valuable.  And beyond that, it was occasionally entertaining not just to listen to her berate callers (why did they call her if they knew she would tell them what they didn’t want to hear?) but to hear people who were far worse off than I have [...]

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Stupidity Thy Name is Kim Kardashian

by Sasha Stone August 18, 2010 Misc
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I’m not here to preach to people about breastfeeding.  Nothing is more irritating than nazi-mommies forcing people to breastfeed.  Yes, everyone knows it is best.  But sometimes it just doesn’t work.  Period.  You can this or that but the truth is that sometimes a woman can’t, a baby won’t, or the milk just never done come. We moms pretty much accept this as one of the many things women like to degrade or impress each other with.  Whose a better mommy, you or me?  Oh, did you give birth naturally?  I did!  And it didn’t hurt.  It was spiritual!  How about you?  Oh, really? Oh, that’s too bad.  Yeah, bite me.  If there is one thing one learns after the trials and tribulations of motherhood, it’s that these little power trips we play to one another mean absolutely nothing in the long run.

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Delicious Tapas

by Sasha Stone August 16, 2010 FOODIEDOM

Jeff Cox at Organictobe.org just listed a dreamy selection of summer tapas treats that I really must share.  I’ve had the stomach flu, or a bug, or food poisoning for the past two days but am feeling much better. · A small plate of apple slices, bites of cheese, and walnuts. · A dish of sliced apricots sprinkled with lemon zest. · Slices of avocado and grapefruit segments, sprinkled with lime juice. Or, avocado slices topped with chopped red onion and a splash of lemon juice. · Fresh-picked green bean pieces lightly sautéed in butter, skewered on a toothpick with small pieces of bacon. · Diced roasted beets lightly dusted with nutmeg. · Custard-berry cubes: Place blackberries in the compartments of an ice cube tray, then fill with vanilla custard and refrigerate until set. The custard-berry cubes are gently pried out of the compartments with a butter knife and served [...]

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