Vixen Chronicles

I have been doing a lot of reading this past month. Lots of time in cars and on planes. It scares a lot of folks that I read and drive. Doesn't everyone? ;-) My book club selection was The Life of Pi. I forced myself to finish it and for the life of me I was trying to figure out why the hell everyone was raving about it. I was angry at the end when I found out the twist. I won't spoil it for you. Just skip to the last few chapters, though. On to The Mermaid chair by Sue Monk Kidd. I liked this, although it wasn't as good as her Secret Life of Bees. Why they kept letting that poor woman cut off her fingers I don't know. I wanted her to run off with the priest though. Grown Folks business by Victoria Christopher Murray. I am not a big Christian fiction reader but I enjoyed this. I didn't feel like I was being preached at and you know what, if we were faced with what the main character was, her husband came home and said he was leaving her for another man, I'd be...

A friend of mine from graduate school just moved to Texas. She didn't want to, but an offer she couldn't refuse had her packing her stuff and saddling up her horse. She came to visit first and had that thing about Texas that folks often do, you know, that TV thing that expects cowboys and indians and tough lawmen with spurs. Its sort of the same thing a lot of folks have about New York, except that all expect Gotham City. Anyway, she got here and I felt obliged to teach her how to speak Texan and a few other things. I mean,i f you are going to live here and love it, there are some things you just gotta know. Tequila speak and Mojitos and how to eat a good fajita, and even that it is okay to live in Texas and not eat beef (contrary to popular belief). She absolutely had to know where the Hill Country was and that the Colorado River does not exist here,instead we have water ways where the map says the river is that are called Lake Buchanan (pronounced BUCK-anun), and Lake LBJ and...

Okay, so Oprah got snubbed at Hermes. Let's get this straight. She was walking by the store WITHOUT HER MAKEUP in Paris, after hours and decided she wanted to pop in to buy something for her dinner. Okay. Let's start at the top. She was in Paris. Parisians have a reputation for not being friendly. Well, one of the things I figured out while I was there is that it is not that they are not friendly, the concept of customer service is different. Americans expect everyone to be nice to you, especially in stores, but in Paris, things seem to be based more on relationships. You go to the neighborhood grocery or baker. They know you. You have a relationship, so they are nice to you. If they don't know you, I found them to be equally rude to everyone. Even celebrities. Now, personally, I don't have a problem with that. I mean, as long as its not just me. Two, She went to the store fifteen minutes after closing time. At least they talked to her. In the US, if you showed up at a ...

I'm spending my Father's Day is central Texas. While I bake in the heat, I can't help but reflect and think about the times with my own father. He died exactly eleven years and 3 days ago. Most of us don't have a chance to appreciate the people in our lives until they are gone, but I have to say that my father is one of those people that I think about often. There isn't a major (or minor) moment that happens in my life when I don't sit back and say, "I gotta call Daddy and tell him--" and then I realize I can't call him, unless I have one helluva phone, and THAT kind of phone hasn't been invented yet. That thought doesn't make me sad though. He had a lot of time for us to get to know each other. There are those that believe that the dead go away, never to be seen or heard again, but my father's life and death give me reassurance in the African way of believing. I know that the energy he possessed could not possibly go into n...

I picked SkyLounge out of the blue. Okay, out of CitySearch: Baltimore. Supposedly you could get one helluva martini there on a Sunday night. CitySearch was right. We crept up in the place just after eleven pm. We almost couldn’t find it. SkyLounge was buried deep in Federal Hill, nestled in one of Baltimore’s Famous Alleys. (So, I don’t know if they are famous but if they aren’t they ought to be). I gotta tell you, we drove around the neighborhood scared at first, the way you are scared when you feel like you are lost in someone else’s hood and feel like you might stick out like a sore thumb, but when we did happen upon the bar, we were surprised. It was clean, neat, and almost empty. We sat down, ordered a drink, and stayed anyway. We soon found out that we were a little early. There wasn’t much happening. Or so it seemed. Just an eclectic bunch of folk sipping martinis. We sat back into the cushions and tried to make chit chat among ourselves and ...