Mishaps and other haps

This week I have tried my hand at chocolate truffles for the first time. It was a successful attempt– and easy!

Alas, there is still the butter and heavy whipping cream factor– which make these occasional treats, rather than our dinner every night this year week.

I am reading a book I picked up on my birthday, David Wann’s Simple Prosperity: Finding Real Wealth in A Sustainable Lifestyle.

I keep thinking I am going to pick up a piece of fiction and I keep being thwarted by non-fiction. Oddly enough, I have trouble finding novels that I think are worth my time. I’m not sure whether I should elaborate more on that comment and try to explain how I decide whether a book is worth reading. Maybe I should do that some time, in another post.

My current book is full of warnings about why we (especially Americans and Westerners, but all humans) need to change our lifestyles due to global warming, limited natural resources, and burgeoning population issues. Wann then suggests changes that readers can implement to begin to make the lifestyle transitions he envisions.

Combining self-help strategies and environmental policy, he argues that rampant and unrelenting consumerism has replaced the things that truly satisfy us in life– hobbies, friends, passions, fulfilling work– and has left us unhappy, while at the same time we are damaging the world for generations to come through consumption and misuse of resources. Like several other books I have read in the past few years, it predicts disaster (personal and global in this case) and offers solutions for averting the disaster.

At least, I think that is what the book is about. I am less than 50 pages in. I will report back when I have finished it and have a stronger opinion about the quality of the arguments.

Thanks to all of you who dropped by for our New Year’s party!  We had a lively full house, there were lots of snacks, and it was great to have all of you around.  We missed those of you who had other commitments or who live too far away to drop by!

I have plans and goals for 2008, but my one highly important Resolution for the year is to stop stressing out and worrying so much.  It’s bad for my health and it rubs off on other people.  For a first-born child of two first-born children, this Resolution is quite a challenge.  Most of my life, various achievements and successes have been entangled in a mesh of worry and stress.  It is time to sort that out and be successful without being stressed.  Moreover, it is important to let happiness fill the gaps that an absence of worry and stress will leave in my life.

I think this is a good idea.