the pomegranate tiger

Yesterday, I saw this item about Suzanne Somers, Suzanne Somers' Daily Routine . . . on Huffington Post. It describes Somers' appearance on Oprah where she talks about her daily routine of hormone replacement creams, 60 vitamin and nutrient supplements (40 in the morning, 20 at night), and vaginal injections of estriol. She does all of this in order to beat what she calls, "the Seven Dwarfs of Menopause: Itchy, Bitchy, Sleepy, Sweaty, Bloated, Forgetful and All Dried Up". Call me crazy, but I'm thinking her cure is a bit of overkill. The cost alone, would be well out of reach for the average woman. It made me curious. So I decided to take a look at SuzanneSomers.com and see what she's been up to since her Chrissy Snow days on Three's Company and hawking the Thigh Master . It appears she's become quite the entrepreneur. Here are a few things she sells nowadays: The FaceMaster; a facial toning system "The revolutionary FaceMaster Facial Toning S...

Being unable to come up with anything original today, I've decided to try this Photo Meme I found at Imagine . Instructions: Go to the file where you keep photos on your computer, open the fourth file, then choose the fourth photo in the file. Describe. This is what I found: It's a picture of my bedside table taken on January 21, 2006. I took it to post on a forum I frequent. I believe we were having a discussion about what we were reading that turned into what our reading piles actually looked like. In other words this messy pile of books amounts to my "currently reading" list as of three years ago (where does the time go?). I almost always have more than one book on the read at any given time, but I must say the books here are a bit atypical in that I don't normally read so many non-fiction books at one time. What's there and my thoughts (starting front, left): The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood was a quick re-read for an upcoming discussion. The Bl...

I can't remember when I bookmarked Cafe Writing: Scribblings on a virtual napkin , but I rediscovered it today while tidying up my folder of bookmarks. It was saved under Ellen's Favourites -> Writing. I do remember thinking I it would be interesting to try some of their projects. Their projects have several options with a choice of different forms (poetry, fiction, essay, etc.) For some reason, I never returned until today. Better late than never. So here is my first Cafe Writing Project for 2009. Since I'm a list person, I've chosen a list prompt to get started. Option Six: Seven Things : In a mood of faith and hope my work goes on. A ream of fresh paper lies on my desk waiting for the next book. I am a writer and I take up my pen to write.. ~Pearl S. Buck In improvisation, one of our exercises is a game called “Seven Things,” in which we go around in a circle giving each other the challenge, “Give me seven things that [whatever].” We are not going to go around ...

A few years ago, when just starting this blog, I wrote about my own Myers-Briggs personality type: INFJ. (It also appears to be when Joy, from Babble On first discovered my blog -- but I digress.) Over the intervening years, I've noticed that the pomegranate tiger gets quite a few hits via Google searches through that particular page. Today, having nothing better to do, I was looking at my site statistics and noticed yet another hit on that page. I tracked the link back through Google search and saw The Real Personality Types which states, "Now, there are many places which will tell you what this all means, but none of them are quite as...relevant to today's modern civilization as this one..." it then goes on to describe the various personality types, "made relevant" to the modern world. Hilarious. Here's an updated description of my INFJ personality: INFJ: The Conspiracy Theorist Beneath the calm, collected exterior of the INFJ lies the horrible...

Kay from Kay's Thinking Cap was kind enough to give me this Van Goh's Ear Award : I rather like the notion of Van Goh's Ear -- the whole slightly mad, creative artist thing. Although in my case, I think of the Madwoman of Chaillot. According to the originator of the award at the Idaho Photo blog: We are all artists in are own way be it art, photography, writing, philosophy, comedy, blogging and we all go a little crazy sometimes. But if you ever feel so crazy to cut off your ear and give it to a prostitute "Seek Help"! So, many thanks to Kay, one of my two followers. :D

I've been in the long, slow process of scanning old photos and came across this black & white of me on my wedding day. It was taken by a cousin who was into photography at the time. That's my father in the background just prior to putting on my headpiece/veil thingy and before leaving the house for the ceremony. I can't remember what I was thinking at the time. I know I wasn't scared. It's hard to tell from this photo.

From Sunday Scribblings , the prompt, Phantoms and Shadows : - things and people, times, places, events and how your memory has treated them. Are there people you try to remember more clearly, phantoms you'd like to reach back into the past and take a firm hold of? What do you remember of your early school years? College years? Your grandparents? First pets, first houses, first friends? Do you have a good or poor memory? If you could go back to any particular time/place to recall more vividly what it was like, what would that be? I have few regrets in life, but recently, I've grown to regret my almost pathological detachment of people from the past. But, am I ready to do something about it? I've lived most of my life like a one-way road trip. I make stops in towns along the way; take the occasional detour or side-trip; meet interesting people; connect with individuals for a short time; then move on to the next town and the next experience with only the obligatory we-shoul...

There are so many interesting and useful places on the internet. There are online shopping sites and banking sites to pay your bills. There are blogs, discussion forums, online magazines, online newspapers, social networking sites, photo sites, writing sites, reading sites, school sites, you-name-it sites. Most of them are free. But there's often a catch. Before you can access the goodies on the site, you need to belong. They want you to become a member. Now, I've never been much of a joiner and don't belong to any clubs; but for the sake of being able to read or use certain sites, I've become a member of various "communities". That's where I have problems. In order to become a member, you need to join, and in order to join, you need to sign in, and in order to sign in, you need to provide certain information. I don't mind the email info because I use a separate one for my internet browsing. I don't even mind providing a birth year because...

Retirement Along with so many others, we (hubby and I) have been caught in the crash and burn of the world economy this past year. Being self-employed, we have no big company pension, no union-backed retirement plan; nothing but our own savings and investments. Like most others, our investment/retirement savings have dropped significantly. To say it's set back our retirement plans is an understatement. I joke to friends and family that we may retire by age ninety, if we're lucky. We had great plans for retirement. Those of you who follow this blog know, we love to travel, dine out and help our sons out if and when necessary. I was going to spend more time reading, writing and pursuing other interests - perhaps a new language or two. We even had a tentative date set in 2010. Given my family history of longevity, and if nothing untoward happens to my health, and I don’t get hit by a truck or go down in a plane brought down by a flock of birds, I may live well into my ni...

So, my grandfather was a drug dealer. My sons think it's pretty funny that they can tell people this fact about great-grandpa. He ran a store in the late 1800s to early 1900s that manufactured and sold opium. Opium was legal back then and the 1903 newspaper advertisement for the store stated they were "Importers and Exporters of Chinese and Japanese Fancy Goods" and "Rice and Opium Manufacturers". In all other respects, it was a regular general store. It's all chronicled in the book, Yi Fao: Speaking Through Memory: A History Of New Westminster's Chinese Community 1858-1980 . The book highlights four of the pioneering Chinese families in New Westminster. The first I'd heard about this book was after my aunt died last year. It was mentioned in her obituary that she was one of the people interviewed by the author of Yi Fao. Unfortunately, she died before the book was published. I tried to get hold of a copy, but the Chapters/Indigo store I frequ...

I was a banana and I didn't know it. This realization came to me when I was about twelve or thirteen. I was blithely living my life full of the usual pre-teen angst, pre-pubescent teen-idol crushes and general fuzzy-headedness of that age.For the most part, I thought I was just like my friends. But I wasn't. I wrote the above for a prompt at First 50 Words . It got me thinking about how long it took me to realize my own banana-ness. Banana: An Asian person who acts like they are white. Yellow on the outside, white on the inside. I had never heard banana used this way until I was in university where, thankfully, I was exposed to a much broader experience. I was raised in a WASP community. In my graduating class of approximately five hundred, fewer than a dozen were non-white. I can probably name them now: Ellen, Nirmal, Linda, Bob, Bev, Doug, Ed, Chuck, Sonny, and another Ellen. I always knew something was off – the snickered racial slurs, the outright snubbing by cer...

(a Sunday Scribblings prompt and the continuing saga of Debra ) "Deb, it is you. What are you doing here?" Charles took Debra's hand and yanked her to her feet. As she busied herself with brushing sand -- yet again -- off her clothes, Debra couldn't help but see Charles shaking his head in his annoying, can't believe she's done it again manner. She could feel herself bristling. "What?!!" "Nothing. I just can't believe you're here." Charles shuffled backwards and plopped himself onto the sand. He was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, faded khakis and sandals. Very un-Charles-like. The last time she'd seen him, he was pounding on her apartment door saying they could still "work things out" if she'd only talk to him. She couldn't be bothered. There was nothing to work out. She ignored his subsequent phone messages, emails, notes and letters. Eventually, they stopped. Their relationship had ended like all her rela...