Hard to be mindful?

This is going to come off as a tirade about bad drivers, but I get to thinking about frustration, mindfulness, and impatience a lot when I'm driving. I see more than enough thoughtless drivers making rather bad choices when I'm on the road. My path through life has reminded me that I need to be mindful of what I do, whether by thought, word, or deed. While on the road, I try to discipline myself to not think badly about the other folks on the road when they cut me off or tailgate me. It isn't the being cut-off part that truly irks me, but the fact that some of these folks do not think to signal does cause much frustration. Visited by my favourite bugbear, I try my hardest to be mindful. Sometimes I succeed and sometimes I fail. That's life, but I'm also trying to come up with reasons as to why these tailgaters and the like do what they do. I'm not condoning what they do, but I would rather have some reason as to WHY they do it. This keeps the frustration at bay a little longer and calms me a touch.
I admit frankly that I am sometimes impatient at the actions of 'slow drivers'. I do not call people who drive the speed limit 'slow drivers'. I drive the speed limit, and it bugs me when someone's close to bumping me because I'm not going fast enough for their liking. I'd rather they go around me than hang out there, trying to intimidate me. The temptation to come to an abrupt stop and let them crash into me just to press charges on them later floats just beneath the surface of my thoughts. I've never done it, but thought=word=deed. Definitely a bad choice no matter how it comes out. But I digress. I get a little frustrated by folks who DO drive under the speed limit (or at least seem like they do), or folks who are a little too hesistant when they seek to merge with traffic. These people are holding up the flow of traffic and that is what leads to traffic jams and other causes of frustration.
I know that sometimes a guy is late for work, and that's why he speeds. I don't condone it, and I do leave for work early just to make sure that I'm not late. However, I've been known to grumble at someone ahead of me who's being a little pokey even though I have lots of time. There. I've made my confession for the week (or month). I will probably have more to say on the subject of books next time. I'm reading a pretty informative book and should be ready around June 30th... maybe. BYE.

Books to love

Just an update on my cold and then we'll move on; the cold is only an ominous memory. Hooray for antibiotics! Been reading quite a bit since my last post and today I'm going to talk about two books I've read. If this post goes on rather long, I apologize. First off, I finished reading that Matthew Arnold book I mentioned in my last post. It's called 'Schools and universities on the Continent', and was edited by R.H. Super. Super's a guy who has to have some high respect for Arnold, for he released several volumes of the man's work in the 70's and not all the material is easy reading. In fact, much of it could be considered boring. Still, this book I read, while it might be considered boring, shows that Arnold was a man who really loved his job. It comes through in the writing, which is concise and laden with information. He inspected schools in Prussia, Switzerland, Germany, and France; I cannot imagine what sort of experiences he had that did not come up in this book.
Either he knew several languages or he had a good translator with him. Nothing like this is mentioned, but he comes across as a man who loved his job. Does the job of 'school inspector' still exist? It probably does, but I don't think it's any more glamourous than Arnold's job was. Really, Arnold was just looking at these schools to see how they compared with English schools. I don't know if one can do that any longer. Darn homogenous world!!! Anyway, onto the second book.
I read Kapleau's 'Awakening to Zen' last year and I admit that I felt like I was walking onto uncertain ground. There was something in that book that really unsettled me. I will have to check last year's entries to see what it was that so unsettled me. I returned to it recently and I have to admit; I did not feel at all unsettled this time. Actually, I enjoyed revisiting it.
Maybe I was in a state of turmoil last year and reading this book didn't help me any. I enjoyed coming back to the lectures documented in this book. I won't be returning to it in two years, but it is a good book. For the intermediate traveller, one might say. That's all I can say about it. It's well-travelled ground.
One last note. I'm reading 'Everyday life through the ages'. I like looking through this gem from Reader's Digest every now and again. Chock-full of information. That's all. BYE.

More misc.

I could blame my absence on Sims 3, or on my ongoing feud with this ridiculous cold. Truth is, I think they're both to blame. That and the fact that I didn't really have anything new to say. Anyway, this is going to be a hodge-podge of stuff. It isn't that I haven't been doing much reading, which is where I get most of my post material from. I also get it from my diary, which has been serving as a rough draft for this blog. Lately my diary's been full of my being sick, and since I've already dedicated two posts to this damned quarrel, I'm not going to bore you with it any further. Meanwhile, some numbers. 12: the number of work days until the end of the school year. I work right up to June 30. I need as much time as possible to clean up my libraries and get as many books back as possible before we all go home for the holidays.
Work, despite my cold, continues to be amazing and wonderful. I'm wondering if I'm going to miss getting up at 6 and driving the 20-30 mins. to be at one or the other of the schools. I'm wondering if I'm going to miss the kids. Well, I'll miss most of them. Then they go up a grade in September. I'll meet a new group of Kindies and the Fifth Grade goes on to middle school. They'll get to see my predecessor at that middle school, so everybody'll be happy. I know I'll miss many of those Fifth Graders. Especially the ones who brought back their books or renewed their books without fail. I believe I've already discussed the kids who don't (or can't) bring their overdues back in a previous post, so that's all I'm going to say about that.
Actually, I thought about doing my post on obsolete projector lightbulbs. Total snore, you might say. Well, I came across a treasure trove of bulbs that probably still work, even though they haven't seen the light of day in a long while. Curiosity taking over, I did some research on projector lightbulbs and found a pretty informative site. For anyone with a similar social life as mine or they just really want to know, this is the place to find lightbulbs. Maybe next post I'll put some pictures up as evidence of this bulbs. There, I got in a note about projector lightbulbs.
I finished reading 'The book of Druidry', but I haven't seemed to get anything out of it apart from approving of the book. I have also started reading another Matthew Arnold compilation. Man, something must be wrong with me! Okay, I know this hasn't been very cohesive, but as I've said, I haven't done as much deep thinking into one particular topic. Well, there's the Sims, but I doubt anyone wants to hear about that. BYE.