Sample Love Quotes

But before I can say anything, he cups my cheek and leans down to kiss me once more. This time it’s sweet, slow, savoring. Patient. This time it’s lingering and gentle—everything our other kiss wasn’t. I want to try them all. All the kisses Levi Ward is capable of, I want to sample them like fine wine.

My mother looks at me with love and understanding, and I realize: she knows what my father did. She knows what I want. She knows and even though she would not destroy a tissue sample or love someone who is not her Match, she still loves us, even though we have done those things.

A whole big, giant world full of men. Men with blue eyes. Brown eyes. Green eyes. And indescribable shades in between. Tall men. Short men. Skinny men. Built men. And all combinations thereof. Nice men (so I've heard, but never really seen). Mean men. Decent men, indecent. And who knows which is the best kind to have, to hold, to love? I'd say, with so many men in the world, it would pay to sample a few. Scratch that. More than a few. Lots and lots. And then a few more. And maybe, after years of research, you might find one worth not throwing back. But hey, the fun is in the fishing.

Love? Love is about an unquenchable hunger, a passion so powerful it cannot be ignored. In the face of love,” he spoke softly, “all resistance is futile. Sex is momentary, ephemeral ecstasy at best without love. No one with a good opinion of themselves would trade sex by itself if they could have the true geld .. love with a worthy lover. It alters lives, and even the barest slice of true love … a moment, an evening, a day’s worth, can become a treasure to be pulled from the memory and ignite those feelings again many years after it has passed. It is the most powerful of all compulsions." Das

She was with me the day I went to the paint store to pick out the color. I had a nice tan color in mind, but May latched on to this sample called Caribbean Pink. She said it made her feel like dancing a Spanish flamenco. I thought, "Well, this is the tackiest color I've ever seen, and we'll have half the town talking about us, but if it can lift May's heart like that, I guess she ought to live inside it." "All this time I just figured you liked pink," I said. She laughed again. "You know, some things don't matter that much, Lily.. Like the color of a house. How big is that in the over-all scheme of life? But lifting a person's heart-now, that matters. The whole problem with people is-" "They don't know what matters and what doesn't," I said, filling in her sentence and feeling proud of myself for doing so. "I was gonna say, The problem is they know what matters, but they don't choose it. You know how hard that is, Lily? I love May, but it was still so hard to choose Caribbean Pink. The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.

Some sample lyrics I think I catch: "My engine races up to seventh gear; wrap your legs around my engine, dear . . . . The tunnel's dark, but the ground is wet; I lubricate it with my dripping sweat!" Or, something vaguely disturbing and gross like that; it's hard to tell with the wailing guitars and the front man screaming through his ravaged vocal chords.

If my love were a bagel, I’d put cream cheese on it. But it’s not a bagel, so I just put cheddar on top. Would you like to try a sample?

Would a DNA test for love take a sample from the heart or the mind?

When we have sampled much and have wandered far and have seen how fleeting and sometimes superficial a lot of the world is, our gratitude grows for the privilege of being part of something we can count on—home and family and the loyalty of loved ones. We come to know what it means to be bound together by duty, by respect, by belonging. We learn that nothing can fully take the place of the blessed relationship of family life.

The old father of lies was clever at telling half-truths: How shall you “know” good and evil, until you shall have sampled a little? Taste and be as Gods. But neither infinite power nor infinite wisdom could bestow godhood upon men. For that there would have to be infinite love as well.

I’m about to berate his tactics, to deny any feelings for him, when he cups the nape of my neck and presses his lips to mine, velvety soft. It’s nothing but a peck, yet the flavor of the tart he sampled lingers like a warm, savory bruise—an irresistible torment to the netherling within. He draws back and my skin glistens, radiant prisms reflected off his face and the cushions. I’m gripping his jacket lapels, yet I don’t even remember reaching for him. “No more denials,” he says as he presses his left hand over one of mine. “I’ve seen the love in your eyes and in your actions. I felt it yesterday when I held you in my arms, and today, when you came to save me."

I want to try them all. All the kisses Levi Ward is capable of, I want to sample them like fine wine.

Love and loathing can hold no surprises for most people in middle age. What we haven't gorged on, we've sampled.

Be an example; don’t be a critic with sample.

Doctors love unsolicited stool samples. Next time, shit in a to-go box and leave it in your favorite medical professional’s fridge. Or just order some duck poop and have it delivered.

Having come so close to losing everything, I am freed now of all fear, hesitation, and timidity, and, once revived, intend to devoutly wander the earth, imbibing, smelling, sampling, loving whomever I please; touching, tasting, standing very still among the beautiful things of this world,

A loved husband is the companion of companions, the supreme sharer, and a happy wife often sounds trivial when she is really sampling and enjoying their mutual and unique confidence. But in doing it, she largely loses her power of independent decision and action. She either brings her husband round to her way of thinking or goes over to his, and mostly she doesn't know or care which it is.

Being on that stage was the headiest intoxicant I’d yet sampled. I loved it so much that from that moment on I thought, “I’m doing this now, I’ll do whatever it takes.” I’d had my head filled with my dad’s motivation tapes: “You can do whatever you want. Focus on what your goal is, refuse to fail.” I

He firmly pulled her body against his and he brushed her lips with his. Staring into her eyes, he lightly slid his tongue across her bottom lip. She drew a deep, staggered breath in response to the wave of heat she felt flushing through her. Derrick smiled at her. Then, he softly kissed her. He lightly swept his tongue between her lips, pressing his warm, soft lips to hers. He slid his hands up her body and cradled her face with his hands. Then, he passionately kissed her, tickling her tongue with his. He sucked her lips, gently, as though he was sampling nectar on a delicate petal. Then, with an intense urgency, he dipped his tongue past her lips, caressing her tongue with his. She felt fluttering inside. Anne’s body craved him. A shallow hum escaped from within her in response to how he was making her feel. She could feel his body responding to her. He was breathing heavier which was waking Anne’s primal needs. The tidal wave of lust that had just churned within her was slowly calming as his kiss became more subtle and tender. He gently pressed his lips against hers. He pulled back a little and looked away, exhaling.

Our poor human heart is flawed: it is like a cake without the frosting: the first two acts of the theatre without the climax. Even its design is marred for a small piece is missing out of the side. That is why it remains so unsatisfied: it wants life and it gets death: it wants Truth and it has to settle for an education; it craves love and gets only intermittent euphoria’s with satieties. Samples, reflections and fractions are only tastes, not mouthfuls. A divine trick has been played on the human heart as if a violin teacher gave his pupil an instrument with one string missing. God kept a part of man's heart in Heaven, so that discontent would drive him back again to Him Who is Eternal Life, All-Knowing Truth and the Abiding Ecstasy of Love.

Oh, is that what I smell?” Mrs. McHenry said with a shudder. (For the record, our school smells just fine, unless of course your smelling ability has been irreparably damaged by a lifetime of sniffing perfume samples.)

Words want to be sampled, relished, remembered; they need breathing space in the shape of commas, colons, semi-colons and full stops. Words are individual. They are content to string along together in sentences and paragraphs, but remain mavericks, outsiders beyond the crowd, the mob, the gang. A long novel begins with the first word.

We see then that the self too is an imaginary story, just like nations, gods and money. Each of us has a sophisticated system that throws away most of our experiences, keeps only a few choice samples, mixes them up with bits from movies we’ve seen, novels we’ve read, speeches we’ve heard, and daydreams we’ve savoured, and out of all that jumble it weaves a seemingly coherent story about who I am, where I came from and where I am going. This story tells me what to love, whom to hate and what to do with myself. This story may even cause me to sacrifice my life, if that’s what the plot requires. We all have our genre. Some people live a tragedy, others inhabit a never-ending religious drama, some approach life as if it were an action film, and not a few act as if in a comedy. But in the end, they are all just stories.

It is quite simple: put passion ahead of training. Feel out in any way you can what you most want to do in science, or technology, or some other science-related profession. Obey that passion as long as it lasts. Feed it with the knowledge the mind needs to grow. Sample other subjects, acquire a general education in science, and be smart enough to switch to a greater love if one appears. But don’t just drift through courses in science hoping that love will come to you. Maybe it will, but don’t take the chance. As in other big choices in your life, there is too much at stake. Decision and hard work based on enduring passion will never fail you.

I love the French language. I have sampled every language, French is my favourite - fantastic language, especially to curse with. Nom de Dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperies de connards d'enculé de ta mère... It's like wiping your arse with silk, I love it.

Name me or be eaten!” Shezmu bellowed. “I name you!” I shouted back. “Shezmu, Slaughterer of Souls, Fierce of Face!” “GAAAAHHHHH!” He writhed in pain. “How do they always know?” “Let us pass!” I commanded. “Oh, and one more thing...my brother wants a free sample.” I just had time to step away, and Carter just had time to look confused before the demon blew yellow dust all over him. Then Shezmu sank under the waves. “What a nice fellow,” I said. “Pah!” Carter spit perfume. He looked like a piece of breaded fish. “What was that for?” “You smell lovely,” I assured him.

It’s not the drug that causes the junkie it’s the laws that causes the junkie because of course the drug laws means that he can’t go and get help because he is afraid of being arrested. He also can’t have a normal life because the war on drugs has made drugs so expensive and has made drug contracts unenforceable which means they can only be enforced through criminal violence. It becomes so profitable to sell drugs to addicts that the drug dealers have every incentive to get people addicted by offering free samples and to concentrate their drug to the highest possible dose to provoke the greatest amount of addiction as possible. Overall it is a completely staggering and completely satanic human calamity. It is the new gulag and in some ways much more brutal than the soviet gulag. In the soviet gulags there was not a huge prison rape problem and in this situation your life could be destroyed through no fault of your own through sometimes, no involvement of your own and the people who end up in the drug culture are walled off and separated as a whole and thrown into this demonic, incredibly dangerous, underworld were the quality of the drugs can’t be verified. Were contracts can’t be enforced except through breaking peoples kneecaps and the price of drugs would often led them to a life of crime. People say “well, I became a drug addict and I lost my house, family, and my job and all that.” It’s not because you became a drug addict but, because there is a war on drugs which meant that you had to pay so much for the drugs that you lost your house because you couldn't go and find help or substitutes and ended up losing your job. It’s all nonsense. The government can’t keep drugs out of prisons for heaven’s sakes. The war on drugs is not designed to be won. Its designed to continue so that the government can get the profits of drug running both directly through the CIA and other drug runners that are affiliated or through bribes and having the power of terrorizing the population. To frame someone for murder is pretty hard but to palm a packet of cocaine and say that you found it in their car is pretty damn easy and the government loves having that power." -Stefan Molyneux

Open Letter to Neil Armstrong" Dear Neil Armstrong, I write this to you as she sleeps down the hall. I need answers I think only you might have. When you were a boy, and space was simple science fiction, when flying was merely a daydream between periods of History and Physics, when gifts of moon dust to the one you loved could only be wrapped in your imagination.. Before the world knew your name; before it was a destination in the sky.. What was the moon like from your back yard? Your arm, strong warm and wrapped under her hair both of you gazing up from your back porch summers before your distant journey. But upon landing on the moon, as the earth rose over the sea of tranquility, did you look for her? What was it like to see our planet, and know that everything, all you could be, all you could ever love and long for.. was just floating before you. Did you write her name in the dirt when the cameras weren't looking? Surrounding both your initials with a heart for alien life to study millions of years from now? What was it like to love something so distant? What words did you use to bring the moon back to her? And what did you promise in the moons ear, about that girl back home? Can you, teach me, how to fall from the sky? I ask you this, not because I doubt your feat, I just want to know what it's like to go somewhere no man had ever been, just to find that she wasn't there. To realize your moon walk could never compare to the steps that led to her. I now know that the flight home means more. Every July I think of you. I imagine the summer of 1969, how lonely she must have felt while you were gone.. You never went back to the moon. And I believe that's because it dosen't take rockets to get you where you belong. I see that in this woman down the hall, sometimes she seems so much further. But I'm ready for whatever steps I must take to get to her.I have seem SO MANY skies.. but the moon, well, it always looks the same. So I gotta say, Neil, that rock you landed on, has got NOTHING on the rock she's landed on. You walked around, took samples and left.. She's built a fire cleaned up the place and I hope she decides to stay.. because on this rock.. we can breath. Mr. Armstrong, I don't have much, many times have I been upside down with trauma, but with these empty hands, comes a heart that is often more full than the moon. She's becoming my world, pulling me into orbit, and I now know that I may never find life outside of hers. I want to give her EVERYTHING I don't have yet.. So YES, for her, I would go to the moon and back.... But not without her. We'd claim the moon for each other, with flags made from sheets down the hall. And I'd risk it ALL to kiss her under the light of the earth, the brightness of home... but I can do all of that and more right here, where she is..And when we gaze up, her arms around ME, I will NOT promise her gifts of moon dust, or flights of fancy. Instead I will gladly give her all the earth she wants, in return for all the earth she is. The sound of her heart beat and laughter, and all the time it takes to return to fall from the sky,down the hall, and right into love. God, I'd do it every day, if I could just land next to her. One small step for man, but she's one giant leap for my kind.

Look at your heart! It tells the story of why you were made. It is not perfect in shape and contour, like a Valentine Heart. There seems to be a small piece missing out of the side of every human heart. That may be to symbolize a piece that was torn out of the Heart of Christ which embraced all humanity on the Cross. But I think the real meaning is that when God made your human heart, He found it so good and so lovable that He kept a small sample of it in heaven. He sent the rest of it into this world to enjoy His gifts, and to use them as stepping stones back to Him, but to be ever mindful that you can never love anything in this world with your whole heart because you have not a whole heart with which to love. In order to love anyone with your whole heart, in order to be really peaceful, in order to be really wholehearted, you must go back again to God to recover the piece He has been keeping for you from all eternity.

She’d never had feelings about any man that were important enough to be real romantic love. Affection, lust, yes those things. Instants in time with someone that had touched her, yes that too. But she found no one for romance that she could look up to, that was real , an individual that wasn’t made up of bits and pieces of clichés, buffeted about on the tide of their wants and the opinions of others, no goal, no point of view that they understood themselves why they held it. She had researched him when she was assigned to protect him, she told him. She had not understood in the beginning. “You were a man that had it all! Worthy and courageous military action; you grew up, came of age in war. A successful career, status in letters, a full professorship at a prestigious university if you wanted it. Accrued wealth and income enough to live however you wanted. Beautiful women in your life … you do not show the full measure of your years in either looks or fitness. “You were a full fledged member of the oligarchy, though at a modest level. Yet you threw it all away! You started your novel, became a thorn in the side of the establishment,” she told him. “I didn’t understand until I read the fragment of manuscript that you had Jean Augereau print out for you. You were on a crusade … totally focused! I saw that you were something special then,” she told him, “That’s when you began to become very special to me!

Sell canoes to those who are enduring a drought, and sell sunscreen to those suffering from flooding. But give love freely to all, because samples encourage sales.

My nana likes to say that spring brings love. Spring in Garden Heights doesn’t always bring love, but it promises babies in the winter.

If someone loves the flower that exists in a single sample in millions of stars, it’s enough for him to look at stars and be happy. He can say to himself. “My flower is somewhere there…

A small sample of some girl-written words That summer was a new beginning, a new end. When I look back, I remember my slippery hands of paint and the sound of Papa's feet on Munich Street, and I know that a small piece of the summer of 1942 belonged to only one man. Who else would do some paintwork for the price of half a cigarette? That was Papa, that was typical, and I loved him.

Crushes thrive in small spaces. Humans must be programmed to respond positively when faced with a small sampling of other humans in, say, caves. You're stuck in a cave with three other people - all mankind, presumably, was hidden away in such tiny groups during the winters until the thaw - and so, in order for the species to thrive, you must be biologically compelled to fuck at least one person in your cave, despite the fact that, when surrounded by a plenitude of Neanderthals at the Neanderthal summer barbecue, none of them struck your fancy. Without the element of choice, and in conjunction with captivity, you find love, or at least you find lust.

She showed you how to make her special adobo recipe- proper adobo, with soy sauce and vinegar and spices- and it tasted exquisite, better than any other grandmother would have made. She offered both meals for free to the carinderia's clientele that day, much to their delight. Sampling your casserole brought them no perceptible changes; eating Lola's adobo left them fresh, eager, and thrumming with energy, exhaustion falling away like a cloak.

Everyone says, Come to your senses, and I do, of you. Every touch electric, every taste you, every smell, even burning sugar, every cry and laugh. Toothpicked samples at the farmers’ market, every melon, plum, I come undone, undone.

Khalil is watching me. A smile tries to form on his lips, but he shakes his head. “Can’t believe you still love whiny-ass Drake.” I gape at him. “Leave my husband alone!” “Your corny husband. ‘Baby, you my everything, you all I ever wanted,

A sample may taste better than the whole, because it’s meant for a taste test, which is perceptually expected to garner favorable results. This is why I can’t give you all my love. Plus, you don’t have a container big enough to hold all my love.

She bought me betta fish when I was six, after I kept telling her the same story, every day, about the tanks we had in my class at school, the betta fish, red and purple and blue and green, swimming lazily in the tanks, flashing brilliant and then dull. She came home with one on a Sunday, after she'd been out all weekend. I hadn't seen her since Friday, since she told Mam she was going to the store to buy some milk and some sugar and didn't come back. When she came back, her skin was dry and flaking at the corners of her mouth, her hair stuck out in a bushy halo, and she smelled like wet hay. The fish was green, the color of pine needles, and he had stripes down his tail the color of red mud. I called him Bubby Bubbles, since he blew bubbles all day, and when I leaned over his tank, I could hear him crunching on the fish food Leonie had brought home in a sample-size bag. I imagined even then that one day I could lean over his bowl, and instead of crunching, little words would pop out the bubbles that fizzed up to the surface. Big face. Light. And love. But when the sample size of fish food ran out, and I asked Leonie to buy me more, she said she would, and then forgot, again and again, until old day she said: Give him sold old bread. I figured he couldn't crunch like needed on some old bread, so I kept bugging her about it, and Bubby got skinnier and skinnier, his bubbles smaller and smaller, until I walked into the kitchen one day and he was floating on top of the water, his eyes white, a slimy scrim like fat, no voice in his bubbles. Leonie kill things.

So, consider this. Today he’s sober, no traces of chemicals caught in his bloodstream, no bullet-blown high patching synthetic samples over the melody of his mind. Does that make this real or a side-effect of the comedown? Falling in love feels no-parachute sorts of terrifying, the ground rushing up too hard and too fast. If love is intangible, hypothetical, subjective and experienced on a uniquely individual basis, how can Jaxon ever truly know if that’s the way he’s feeling? But then, realistically, how can he know that it’s not?

Terence, this is stupid stuff: You eat your victuals fast enough; There can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear, To see the rate you drink your beer. But oh, good Lord, the verse you make, It gives a chap the belly-ache. The cow, the old cow, she is dead; It sleeps well, the horned head: We poor lads, ’tis our turn now To hear such tunes as killed the cow. Pretty friendship ’tis to rhyme Your friends to death before their time Moping melancholy mad: Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.’ Why, if ’tis dancing you would be, There’s brisker pipes than poetry. Say, for what were hop-yards meant, Or why was Burton built on Trent? Oh many a peer of England brews Livelier liquor than the Muse, And malt does more than Milton can To justify God’s ways to man. Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink For fellows whom it hurts to think: Look into the pewter pot To see the world as the world’s not. And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past: The mischief is that ’twill not last. Oh I have been to Ludlow fair And left my necktie God knows where, And carried half way home, or near, Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer: Then the world seemed none so bad, And I myself a sterling lad; And down in lovely muck I’ve lain, Happy till I woke again. Then I saw the morning sky: Heigho, the tale was all a lie; The world, it was the old world yet, I was I, my things were wet, And nothing now remained to do But begin the game anew. Therefore, since the world has still Much good, but much less good than ill, And while the sun and moon endure Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure, I’d face it as a wise man would, And train for ill and not for good. ’Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale Is not so brisk a brew as ale: Out of a stem that scored the hand I wrung it in a weary land. But take it: if the smack is sour, The better for the embittered hour; It should do good to heart and head When your soul is in my soul’s stead; And I will friend you, if I may, In the dark and cloudy day. There was a king reigned in the East: There, when kings will sit to feast, They get their fill before they think With poisoned meat and poisoned drink. He gathered all that springs to birth From the many-venomed earth; First a little, thence to more, He sampled all her killing store; And easy, smiling, seasoned sound, Sate the king when healths went round. They put arsenic in his meat And stared aghast to watch him eat; They poured strychnine in his cup And shook to see him drink it up: They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt: Them it was their poison hurt. —I tell the tale that I heard told. Mithridates, he died old.

Decade's reading had justified his guess that men and women perceive love identically save for, say, five percent. Reading books by men and women showed only-but it is something- that love struck, in exactly the same way, most, but not all, of those few men and women, since the invention of writing, who wrote something down. An unfair sample.

Your giving does not have to reflect mine. Be your own kind of ripple. If you have some extra time, give it to a shelter. If you have a special trade, mentor or give advice. If you have a business, give free samples. If you have arms, give hugs. Just give in your own capacity, where you are and watch what a difference that one gesture can make. 

Neighbors turned surly; petty jealousies flared into denunciations made to the SA—the Storm Troopers—or to the newly founded Geheime Staatspolizei, only just becoming known by its acronym, Gestapo (GEheime STAatsPOlizei), coined by a post office clerk seeking a less cumbersome way of identifying the agency. The Gestapo’s reputation for omniscience and malevolence arose from a confluence of two phenomena: first, a political climate in which merely criticizing the government could get one arrested, and second, the existence of a populace eager not just to step in line and become coordinated but also to use Nazi sensitivities to satisfy individual needs and salve jealousies. One study of Nazi records found that of a sample of 213 denunciations, 37 percent arose not from heartfelt political belief but from private conflicts, with the trigger often breathtakingly trivial. In October 1933, for example, the clerk at a grocery store turned in a cranky customer who had stubbornly insisted on receiving three pfennigs in change. The clerk accused her of failure to pay taxes. Germans denounced one another with such gusto that senior Nazi officials urged the populace to be more discriminating as to what circumstances might justify a report to the police. Hitler himself acknowledged, in a remark to his minister of justice, “we are living at present in a sea of denunciations and human meanness.

These investigations also revealed that corporate inspectors were unable to recognize infections unless there was pus oozing out of an abscess. In fact, it appears that in our nation's meatpacking plants, contaminated meat is the rule, rather than the exception; researchers from the University of Minnesota found that in over a thousand food samples from numerous retail markets, 69 percent of the pork and beef and 92 percent of the poultry were contaminated with fecal matter that contained the potentially dangerous bacterium E. coli, and according to a recent study published in the Journal of Food Protection fecal contamination was found in 85 percent of fish fillets procured from retail markets and the Internet.52

Each of us has a sophisticated system that throws away most of our experiences, keeps only a few choice samples, mixes them up with bits from movies we’ve seen, novels we’ve read, speeches we’ve heard, and daydreams we’ve savoured, and out of all that jumble it weaves a seemingly coherent story about who I am, where I came from and where I am going. This story tells me what to love, whom to hate and what to do with myself. This story may even cause me to sacrifice my life, if that’s what the plot requires. We all have our genre. Some people live a tragedy, others inhabit a never-ending religious drama, some approach life as if it were an action film, and not a few act as if in a comedy. But in the end, they are all just stories. What,

So there’s a video deep in the depths of YouTube of the three of us lip-syncing to the Jonas Brothers and pretending to play guitars and drums in Hailey’s bedroom. She decided she was Joe, I was Nick, and Maya was Kevin. I really wanted to be Joe – I secretly loved him the most, but Hailey said she should have him, so I let her. I let her have her way a lot. Still do. That’s part of being Williamson Starr, I guess. “I so have to find that video,” Jess says. “Nooo,” Hailey goes, sliding off the tabletop. “It must never be found.” She sits across from us. “Never. Ne-ver. If I remembered that account’s password, I’d delete it.” “Ooh, what was the account’s name?” Jess asks. “JoBro Lover or something? Wait, no, JoBro Lova. Everybody liked to misspell shit in middle school.

One study of Nazi records found that of a sample of 213 denunciations, 37 percent arose not from heartfelt political belief but from private conflicts, with the trigger often breathtakingly trivial. In October 1933, for example, the clerk at a grocery store turned in a cranky customer who had stubbornly insisted on receiving three pfennigs in change. The clerk accused her of failure to pay taxes. Germans

If God is a single person, then before God created, he was alone in eternity. God had no one to love but himself. But self-love can be toxic, and it is certainly not as rich and vibrant as having love for someone else. Therefore, in traditional monotheism, God had to create other persons (angels or humans) to have someone to love. But if this were true, then God is dependent on the creation for fulfillment.

Traveled so far, and not yet have they come across anything of interest, he mused, except, of course, for that nest of goblins I managed to stir up. Indeed, his brother had always been a valiant fool; why not give him some excitement? He always did possess a love for a good fight, and who am I to deny him? The glass sphere, responding to his thoughts, zoomed in on the mountain nearby where Shrukian camped, and by putting both his hands on the sphere's sides and closing his eyes, Pharun could all but smell the power that radiated from its depths. He could taste it on the back of his tongue, and it awake all sorts of things inside of him. The power tasted of death and ash, and it was scalding hot, pouring down his throat like blood of the freshly dead. He did not need further searching to know what kind of power he was sampling. He smiled to himself, and it came out a satisfied smirk.

We sample the dishes we create together and Rowan presses the gold star from his cheek to the top of a fresh page in a stained, dog-eared notebook where he jots down ideas and feedback on everything we make. And then he declares that it’s time for dessert, the course where he needs the most help. When I try to protest that I’m full, he laughs me off. “I know you can take more,” he says with a smirk, then strides off in the direction of the fridge.

The gigantic samples allow extremely fine analyses, which have confirmed the importance of situational factors, physical health, and social contact in experienced well-being. Not surprisingly, a headache will make a person miserable, and the second best predictor of the feelings of a day is whether a person did or did not have contacts with friends or relatives. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that happiness is the experience of spending time with people you love and who love you.

I spent a few hours with Mercedes. She was, on the surface, quite troll-like—a lover of jubilant online chaos. She told me about her favorite 4chan thread. It was started by "a guy who's genuinely in love with his dog, and his dog went in heat, and so he went around collecting samples and injecting them into his penis and he fucked his dog and got her pregnant and they're his puppies." Mercedes laughed. "That's the thread I told the FBI about when they asked me about 4chan, and some of the officers actually got up and left the room.

A classic study by Columbia’s Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper monitored the behavior of consumers in a grocery store. One day, the store set up a sampling table with 6 different kinds of jam, and customers loved it; another day, the store set up a table with 24 different kinds of jam, and it was even more popular than the first. The surprise came at the cash register: Customers who’d chosen among 6 jams were 10 times more likely to actually buy a jar of jam than customers who’d chosen among 24! It was fun to sample 24 flavors, it seems, but painful to pick among them. The choice was paralyzing.

I run my finger along the textured silk. “It’s so beautiful.” “Salishen silk,” Mage Florel says reverently. “From the Salishen Isles. They’re master weavers, the Salish. True artists. And all of their embroidery is as exquisite as this.” I glance up at her. “Do you think you could use this?” “Of course, Mage Gardner,” she replies, obviously thrilled by my choice. Fallon’s hand comes down on the fabric. “You can’t use this,” she says, her tone hard. I blink up at her in resentful surprise. “Why?” “Because,” she replies, her voice syrupy with condescension, “this is what my dress is being made of.” “Ah, what a pity,” Mage Florel sighs. She pats my shoulder sympathetically. “I’ve others, Mage Gardner, don’t you fret. We’ll find something just as lovely for you...” Heart racing, I put my own hand down firmly on the fabric sample, right next to Fallon’s. I meet Fallon’s stare and hold it. “No. I want this one.” Everyone gapes at me. Fallon leans in a fraction and bares her teeth. “You can’t have it.” I try to ignore the slight trembling of my hand. “Oh, come now, Fallon,” I say as I gesture at the fabric around us, mimicking her sneering tone. “It’s all black. And I’m sure the cut will be different.” I look over at Mage Florel, whose eyes are as wide as everyone else’s. “Can you make sure it’s very different from hers?” Fallon spits out a sound of contempt. “My dress isn’t being made here. I have my own dressmaker.” “Well, then,” I tell her. “That simplifies things.” I turn to Mage Florel. “Can you make it for me in time? With this fabric?” Mage Florel gives me an appraising look, her eyes darting toward Fallon as if weighing the options. She lifts her chin. “Why, yes, Mage Gardner. I think I can.” She smiles coldly at Fallon. “Why don’t you tell me what your dress is like, dear? I’ll make sure it’s quite different.

I’m not sure what to say. Or do. Thank her for giving me the best sex of my god damn life? Get up and leave? The problem is, I’m far from done. My appetite for her just got a sample, and now, I’m starved. I flip her, bringing her back to the mattress, trying not to snap her still contained wrists. She’s wearing a carefree smile. “What’s that look for?” I instantly waver on my feet with uncertainty. Was I not good enough? Does she want more? “Oh, nothing. Pleased you passed round one. I have a full bag of goodies over there. If you’re up for it, I say we move on to round two.” It’s settled. I’ve fallen in love.

Each of us has a sophisticated system that throws away most of our experiences, keeps only a few choice samples, mixes them up with bits from movies we saw, novels we read, speeches we heard, and from our own daydreams, and weaves out of all that jumble a seemingly coherent story about who I am, where I came from and where I am going. This story tells me what to love, whom to hate and what to do with myself. This story may even cause me to sacrifice my life, if that’s what the plot requires. We all have our genre. Some people live a tragedy, others inhabit a never-ending religious drama, some approach life as if it were an action film, and not a few act as if in a comedy. But in the end, they are all just stories.

We see, then, that the self too is an imaginary story, just like nations, gods and money. Each of us has a sophisticated system that throws away most of our experiences, keeps only a few choice samples, mixes them up with bits from movies we saw, novels we read, speeches we heard, and from our own daydreams, and weaves out of all that jumble a seemingly coherent story about who I am, where I came from and where I am going. This story tells me what to love, whom to hate and what to do with myself. This story may even cause me to sacrifice my life, if that’s what the plot requires. We all have our genre. Some people live a tragedy, others inhabit a never-ending religious drama, some approach life as if it were an action film, and not a few act as if in a comedy. But in the end, they are all just stories.

Look at your heart! It tells the story of why you were made. It is not perfect in shape and contour, like a Valentine Heart. There seems to be a small piece missing out of the side of every human heart. That may be to symbolize a piece that was torn out of the Heart of Christ which embraced all humanity on the Cross. But I think the real meaning is that when God made your human heart, He found it so good and so lovable that He kept a small sample of it in heaven. He sent the rest of it into this world to enjoy His gifts, and to use them as stepping stones back to Him, but to be ever mindful that you can never love anything in this world with your whole heart because you have not a whole heart with which to love. In order to love anyone with your whole heart, in order to be really peaceful, in order to be really wholehearted, you must go back again to God to recover the piece He has been keeping for you from all eternity!

Cursing himself, he glided his fingertips from her shoulder inward along the elegant line of her collarbone. She responded to him with a sigh of intoxicated pleasure, arching her head back, lifting her breasts slightly as her body rose to his touch. His eyes glazed over as he realized then that she was awake enough to know what she wanted. He leaned down at once and kissed her shoulder softly, whispering her name. "Wake to me." She touched his head in answer, draping her arm weakly over his neck. He moved onto the bed with her, his heart pounding. He lay beside her, close enough to consume with his lips the small, heady sigh that escaped hers. He watched the dreamy smile that curved her lips as he began caressing her with seductive reassurance, letting her get accustomed to his touch. "That's right. You just relax," he breathed. He skimmed his palm down her arm, but at her elbow, he diverted his explorations to her slender waist. From there, he ran his hand down lower, to her hip. She stretched a little like a pampered cat under his patient stroking. He bent his head at length and pressed a kiss to the white line of her tender neck. He was rewarded with another enticing undulation of her body, drawing him closer. As his lips worked his way higher, Kate turned her mouth to his invitingly. She met his gaze for a fleeting instant before he kissed her; her glittering, heavy-lidded eyes teemed with feverish desire. "Hullo there," he whispered, then he bent his head and claimed her mouth. Her low moan passed from her lips to his. Rohan answered in kind as he deepened the kiss, capturing her chin between his finger and thumb. She clutched two fistfuls of his shirt for a passing instant. Her mouth tasted of red wine. He drank deeper. As she opened her mouth to his hungry kiss, he skimmed his fingertips down her throat to her chest. He slipped his hand into her gown and cupped her breast. With tingling hands, he took her nipple between his finger and thumb and held it lightly as he kissed her. Her approving groan asked wordlessly for more. She touched his shoulders, arms, and chest as he moved downward over her body to indulge himself in sampling her breasts. She made no move to stop him, no longer cold or shivering as she had been in the great hall, but panting, her skin aglow with newfound heat as he undid the bodice of her skimpy gown and bared her lovely breasts. Closing his eyes, he took her nipple into his mouth and sucked until it swelled to glorious fullness against his tongue. The kiss went on and on, for she was even sweeter than he had already fantasized in the great hall. Now that he had her nipple in his mouth, he could not get enough of her. But when she began to writhe hungrily beneath him, her moans climbing, he obliged her, taking his hand down slowly over her quivering stomach through her gown. She was wanton, but he stoked her fire by keeping a leisurely pace for now. He put his hand between her legs, giving her a taste of what she craved. She began rubbing restlessly against the snug hold of his hand cupping her mound. He was rock hard, and enjoyed pleasuring her for a while further, feeling the dampness of her core permeating the thin cloth of her gown

This was the gastronomic heartland of Italy, where every inch of the fertile soil was cultivated. In Parma he visited shops festooned with hams, each one postmarked with the stamps of a dozen different inspectors---the regions of Italy are fiercely protective of their produce, and only a handful of towns between the Enza and Stirone Rivers are allowed to designate themselves as true producers of prosciutto di Parma. Because the huge lofts in which the hams are aged are always left open to the wind, the villages of the Enza valley seemed scented with the aromatic sweetness of the meat as he drove through them. In the valley to the north of Parma, he sampled culatello di zibello, perhaps the greatest of all Parma's pork products and for that reason almost never exported, even to other parts of Italy: a pig's rump, marinated in salt and spices, then sewn inside a pig's bladder and aged for eighteen months in the humid air of the flat river basin, a process so delicate that almost half the hams are spoiled before they are ready, but which leaves the rest incomparably delicious.

recent research indicates that unstructured play in natural settings is essential for children’s healthy growth. As any parent or early childhood educator will attest, play is an innate drive. It is also the primary vehicle for youngsters to experience and explore their surroundings. Compared to kids confined indoors, children who regularly play in nature show heightened motor control—including balance, coordination, and agility. They tend to engage more in imaginative and creative play, which in turn fosters language, abstract reasoning, and problem-solving skills, together with a sense of wonder. Nature play is superior at engendering a sense of self and a sense of place, allowing children to recognize both their independence and interdependence. Play in outdoor settings also exceeds indoor alternatives in fostering cognitive, emotional, and moral development. And individuals who spend abundant time playing outdoors as children are more likely to grow up with a strong attachment to place and an environmental ethic. When asked to identify the most significant environment of their childhoods, 96.5 percent of a large sample of adults named an outdoor environment. In

way to respond to such a test is to give an ambiguous answer and then change the topic. For example, you could respond by saying - “It’s hard to know what people mean to say when you cannot see their body language, mannerisms, etc.” Never qualify yourself in your emails. If she mentions in an email that she loves the car that you are standing next to in one of your photographs, get her talking about why she loves it. Ask her about her interest in automobiles. You could even ask her if she has a need for speed. Do not begin talking about how you bought that car last year and it cost you a pretty penny. Do not talk about how it goes from zero to 60 miles per hour in under five seconds or how people always ask you to give them a joyride in it. Do not bite on her bait. A woman will do this to see if a man might slip up and show her exactly how desperate he is to get validation from other people, especially women. Sample questions Which of the following animals do you like? a. Komodo dragon (+5) b. Bonobo (+3) c. Dog (0) d. Cat  (-1) Your friends would describe you as: a. Sweet and supportive (+5) b. Feisty, fun and sassy (+3) c. Strong and independent (0) d. Totally random (-1)

If I were to list all the positive attributes about Ryan Lilly, I’d run out of superior adjectives to use. I mean seriously, how big do you think my vocabulary is? I only know about a hundred million words, and with that small of a sample size, how could I accurately describe someone as great as Ryan? Ryan is the most amazing guy I’ve ever met. Seriously, I’m insanely jealous and I just want to stab him. But I won’t, because everybody loves Ryan, including me. Ryan is a big inspiration in my life. Not only is Ryan fiercely intelligent—on the level of Newton, da Vinci, and Nietzsche’s mustache—but he is the most open, honest, and understanding guy I’ve ever met. He’s the kind of guy who’d give you the shirt off his back if you asked. I know, because I’m wearing his shirt now. If you don’t know who Ryan Lilly is, you soon will. He’ll probably be one of the most talked about people in history, and just the other day I came across this quote from Pliny (I don’t know how old Pliny is, so I don’t know if it was Pliny the Older or Pliny the Younger) which said, “Everything good I have written about can be summed up in two words: Ryan Lilly.” That’s a real quote I read in a real book. Trust me, I’m a writer.

Alice's Cutie Code TM Version 2.1 - Colour Expansion Pack (aka Because this stuff won’t stop being confusing and my friends are mean edition) From Red to Green, with all the colours in between (wait, okay, that rhymes, but green to red makes more sense. Dang.) From Green to Red, with all the colours in between Friend Sampling Group: Fennie, Casey, Logan, Aisha and Jocelyn Green  Friends’ Reaction: Induces a minimum amount of warm and fuzzies. If you don’t say “aw”, you’re “dead inside”  My Reaction: Sort of agree with friends minus the “dead inside” but because that’s a really awful thing to say. Puppies are a good example. So is Walter Bishop. Green-Yellow  Friends’ Reaction: A noticeable step up from Green warm and fuzzies. Transitioning from cute to slightly attractive. Acceptable crush material. “Kissing.”  My Reaction: A good dance song. Inspirational nature photos. Stuff that makes me laugh. Pairing: Madison and Allen from splash Yellow  Friends’ Reaction: Something that makes you super happy but you don’t know why. “Really pretty, but not too pretty.” Acceptable dating material. People you’d want to “bang on sight.”  My Reaction: Love songs for sure! Cookies for some reason or a really good meal. Makes me feel like it’s possible to hold sunshine, I think. Character: Maxon from the selection series. Music: Carly Rae Jepsen Yellow-Orange  Friends’ Reaction: (When asked for non-sexual examples, no one had an answer. From an objective perspective, *pushes up glasses* this is the breaking point. Answers definitely skew toward romantic or sexual after this.)  My Reaction: Something that really gets me in my feels. Also art – oil paintings of landscapes in particular. (What is with me and scenery? Maybe I should take an art class) Character: Dean Winchester. Model: Liu Wren. Orange  Friends’ Reaction: “So pretty it makes you jealous. Or gay.”  “Definitely agree about the gay part. No homo, though. There’s just some really hot dudes out there.”(Feenie’s side-eye was so intense while the others were answering this part LOLOLOLOLOL.) A really good first date with someone you’d want to see again.  My Reaction: People I would consider very beautiful. A near-perfect season finale. I’ve also cried at this level, which was interesting. o Possible tie-in to romantic feels? Not sure yet. Orange-Red  Friends’ Reaction: “When lust and love collide.” “That Japanese saying ‘koi no yokan.’ It’s kind of like love at first sight but not really. You meet someone and you know you two have a future, like someday you’ll fall in love. Just not right now.” (<-- I like this answer best, yes.) “If I really, really like a girl and I’m interested in her as a person, guess. I’d be cool if she liked the same games as me so we could play together.”  My Reaction: Something that gives me chills or has that time-stopping factor. Lots of staring. An extremely well-decorated room. Singers who have really good voices and can hit and hold superb high notes, like Whitney Houston. Model: Jasmine Tooke. Paring: Abbie and Ichabod from Sleepy Hollow o Romantic thoughts? Someday my prince (or princess, because who am I kidding?) will come? Red (aka the most controversial code)  Friends’ Reaction: “Panty-dropping levels” (<-- wtf Casey???).  “Naked girls.” ”Ryan. And ripped dudes who like to cook topless.”  “K-pop and anime girls.” (<-- Dear. God. The whole table went silent after he said that. Jocelyn was SO UNCOMFORTABLE but tried to hide it OMG it was bad. Fennie literally tried to slap some sense into him.)  My Reaction: Uncontrollable staring. Urge to touch is strong, which I must fight because not everyone is cool with that. There may even be slack-jawed drooling involved. I think that’s what would happen. I’ve never seen or experienced anything that I would give Red to.

I want more, I said, putting a hand to my stomach, which rides higher than most know. Closer to the heart. I want the jiang bing that vendor will make when she runs out of nut butter. I don't think she's arrogant. I think she's right. I want to sample jian bing from every cart in Beijing, and I want to taste what those kids are eating at home, what they don't teach in cookbooks at Le Cordon Bleu. There's so much out there--- Helplessly, I said, I haven't even told you how much I love foods wrapped in other foods. Then tell me. I tried. I tried. Banh xeo in Hanoi, I said, and duck folded in the translucent bing of northern China. I spoke of tacos in Mexico City: suadero, al pastor, gringas. South Indian dosas as long as my arm, thinner than a rib of a feather. Oh, Aida, I said when I fumbled the names of the chutneys. How can I know all I've ever want? Something will get left out. I was wrong about cilantro. Tlayudas, she said stubbornly, as if she hadn't heard. Blini. Crêpes. They're basically French jian bing, I said with a strangled laugh. Pita sandwiches. Pickle roll-ups. Calzone. Bossam! I yelled, and the dogs barked and the children cheered and the streets of old Milan rang with the imported memory of pork kissed by brine, earthy with Korean bean paste, safe in its bed of red leaf lettuce.

among the young, a portent of the world’s future. Hate crimes, violence against women, and the victimization of children are all in long-term decline, as is the exploitation of children for their labor. As people are getting healthier, richer, safer, and freer, they are also becoming more literate, knowledgeable, and smarter. Early in the 19th century, 12 percent of the world could read and write; today 83 percent can. Literacy and the education it enables will soon be universal, for girls as well as boys. The schooling, together with health and wealth, are literally making us smarter—by thirty IQ points, or two standard deviations above our ancestors. People are putting their longer, healthier, safer, freer, richer, and wiser lives to good use. Americans work 22 fewer hours a week than they used to, have three weeks of paid vacation, lose 43 fewer hours to housework, and spend just a third of their paycheck on necessities rather than five-eighths. They are using their leisure and disposable income to travel, spend time with their children, connect with loved ones, and sample the world’s cuisine, knowledge, and culture. As a result of these gifts, people worldwide have become happier. Even Americans, who take their good fortune for granted, are “pretty happy” or happier, and the younger generations are becoming less unhappy, lonely, depressed, drug-addicted, and suicidal. As societies have become healthier, wealthier, freer, happier, and better educated, they have set their sights on the most pressing global challenges. They have emitted fewer pollutants, cleared fewer forests, spilled less oil,

Kate cradled his face between her hands, drinking him in with her mouth while her beauty and her sheer, sweet innocence enveloped him in an almost holy fire. As his hands began to wander over all the soft enticements of her body, she undulated under his palms in seductive invitation. Her breasts swelled beneath his roaming touch. He chafed her erect nipples with his thumbs, but soon could not resist their tautened allure. He dragged his lips away from hers and moved lower to pay homage. He sampled each with a deep, slow, savoring kiss. Her chest heaved as she lay back on her elbows, watching him, and enjoying his attentions. With her breast in his mouth, his hand was free to discover and to claim new territory. And he had a very clear idea of where he wanted to go. His hand inched down her stomach, teasing her as he neared her mound of Venus. His fingers drew playful circles at the bottom of her belly; he made sure she was dying for his touch before he deigned to give it to her. When she groaned with kittenish frustration, her hips rising impatiently to meet his cupped hand, he introduced himself to her mound with a deft caress. Ah, but when his fingertips pressed deeper, he nearly lost his mind. She was dripping for him, anointing his hand with her yearning nectar. She let out an urgent sigh of pleasure and dropped her head back as he began to finger her. His pulse slammed in his arteries, for she was as ready for love as any woman he had ever bedded, her breathless motions urging on his explorations. So wet. It was at about that moment that her unexpected wantonness enslaved him, heart and mind, body and soul. Her silken moans transported him to a throbbing frenzy. He had never wanted anyone with such a deep and elemental need.

The state of you,’ Senan says in disgust. ‘I’m grand,’ Bobby says, miffed. ‘Mr Dwyer,’ Mart tells Cal, ‘is the finest distiller in three counties. A master craftsman, so he is.’ Malachy smiles modestly. ‘Every now and then, when Malachy has a particularly fine product on his hands, he’s gracious enough to bring some of it in here to share with us. As a service to the community, you might say. I thought you deserved an opportunity to sample his wares.’ ‘I’m honoured,’ Cal says. ‘Although I feel like if I had any sense I’d be scared, too.’ ‘Ah, no,’ Malachy says soothingly. ‘It’s a lovely batch.’ He produces, from under the table, a shot glass and a two-litre Lucozade bottle half-full of clear liquid. He pours Cal a shot, careful not to spill a drop, and hands it over. ‘Now,’ he says. The rest of the men watch, grinning in a way that Cal doesn’t find reassuring. The liquor smells suspiciously innocuous. ‘For Jaysus’ sake, don’t be savouring the bloody bouquet,’ Mart orders him. ‘Knock that back.’ Cal knocks it back. He’s expecting it to go down like kerosene, but it tastes of almost nothing, and the burn doesn’t have enough harshness even to make him grimace. ‘That’s good stuff,’ he says. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ Mart says. ‘Smooth as cream. This fella’s an artist.’ Right then the poteen hits Cal; the banquette turns insubstantial beneath him and the room circles in slow jerks. ‘Whoo!’ he says, shaking his head. The alcove roars with laughter, which comes to Cal as a pulsing jumble of sound some distance away. ‘That’s some serious firepower you got there,’ he says. ‘Sure, that was only to give you the flavour of it,’ Malachy explains. ‘Wait till you get started.’ ‘Last year,’ Senan tells Cal, jerking a thumb at Bobby, ‘this fella here, after a few goes of that stuff—’ ‘Ah, now,’ Bobby protests. People are grinning. ‘—he got up out of that seat and started shouting at the lot of us to bring him to a priest. Wanted to make his confession. At two o’clock in the morning.’ ‘What’d you done?’ Cal asks Bobby. He’s not sure whether Bobby will hear

against the velvet rope force fields that kept everyone without an invitation at bay. As I walked toward the entrance, the crowd bombarded me with a mix of insults, autograph requests, death threats, and tearful declarations of undying love. I had my body shield activated, but surprisingly, no one took a shot at me. I flashed the cyborg doorman my invitation, then mounted the long crystal staircase leading up into the club. Entering the Distracted Globe was more than a little disorienting. The inside of the giant sphere was completely hollow, and its curved interior surface served as the club’s bar and lounge area. The moment you passed through the entrance, the laws of gravity changed. No matter where you walked, your avatar’s feet always adhered to the interior of the sphere, so you could walk in a straight line, up to the “top” of the club, then back down the other side, ending up right back where you started. The huge open space in the center of the sphere served as the club’s zero-gravity “dance floor.” You reached it simply by jumping off the ground, like Superman taking flight, and then swimming through the air, into the spherical zero-g “groove zone.” As I stepped through the entrance, I glanced up—or in the direction that was currently “up” to me at the moment—and took a long look around. The place was packed. Hundreds of avatars milled around like ants crawling around the inside of a giant balloon. Others were already out on the dance floor—spinning, flying, twisting, and tumbling in time with the music, which thumped out of floating spherical speakers that drifted throughout the club. In the middle of all the dancers, a large clear bubble was suspended in space, at the absolute center of the club. This was the “booth” where the DJ stood, surrounded by turntables, mixers, decks, and dials. At the center of all that gear was the opening DJ, R2-D2, hard at work, using his various robotic arms to work the turntables. I recognized the tune he was playing: the ’88 remix of New Order’s “Blue Monday,” with a lot of Star Wars droid sound samples mixed in. As I made my way to the nearest bar, the avatars I passed all stopped to stare and point in

Now, there are a few dryadologists who could resist the opportunity to sample faerie food, the enchanted sort served at the tables of the courtly fae---I know several who have dedicated their careers to the subject and would hand over their eye teeth for the opportunity. I stopped at a stand offering toasted cheese---a very strange sort of cheese, threaded with glittering mold. It smelled divine, and the faerie merchant rolled it in crushed nuts before handing it over on a stick, but as soon as it touched my palm, it began to melt. The merchant was watching me, so I put it in my mouth, pantomiming my delight. The cheese tasted like snow and melted within seconds. I stopped next at a stand equipped with a smoking hut. The faerie handed me a delicate fillet of fish, almost perfectly clear despite the smoking. I offered it to Shadow, but he only looked at me with incomprehension in his eyes. And, indeed, when I popped it into my mouth, it too melted flavorlessly against my tongue. I took a wandering course to the lakeshore, conscious of the need to avoid suspicion. I paused at the wine merchant, who had the largest stand. It was brighter than the others, snow piled up behind it in a wall that caught the lantern light and threw it back in a blinding glitter. I had to look down at my feet, blinking back tears, as one of the Folk pressed an ice-glass into my hand. Like the food, the wine smelled lovely, of sugared apples and cloves, but it slid eerily within the ice, more like oil than wine. Shadow kept growling at it, as he had not with the faerie food, and so I tipped it onto the snow. Beside the wine merchant was a stand offering trinkets, frozen wildflowers that many of the Folk threaded through their hair or wove through unused buttonholes on their cloaks, as well as an array of jewels with pins in them. I could not compare them to any jewels I knew; they were mostly in shades of white and winter grey, hundreds of them, each impossibly different from the next. I selected one that I knew, without understanding how, was the precise color of the icicles that hung from the stone ledges of the Cambridge libraries in winter. But moments after I pinned it to my breast, all that remained was a patch of damp.

The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. Oh, what a pleasure that was! Mollie Katzen's handwritten and illustrated recipes that recalled some glorious time in upstate New York when a girl with an appetite could work at a funky vegetarian restaurant and jot down some tasty favorites between shifts. That one had the Pumpkin Tureen soup that Margo had made so many times when she first got the book. She loved the cheesy onion soup served from a pumpkin with a hot dash of horseradish and rye croutons. And the Cardamom Coffee Cake, full of butter, real vanilla, and rich brown sugar, said to be a favorite at the restaurant, where Margo loved to imagine the patrons picking up extras to take back to their green, grassy, shady farmhouses dotted along winding country roads. Linda's Kitchen by Linda McCartney, Paul's first wife, the vegetarian cookbook that had initially spurred her yearlong attempt at vegetarianism (with cheese and eggs, thank you very much) right after college. Margo used to have to drag Calvin into such phases and had finally lured him in by saying that surely anything Paul would eat was good enough for them. Because of Linda's Kitchen, Margo had dived into the world of textured vegetable protein instead of meat, and tons of soups, including a very good watercress, which she never would have tried without Linda's inspiration. It had also inspired her to get a gorgeous, long marble-topped island for prep work. Sometimes she only cooked for the aesthetic pleasure of the gleaming marble topped with rustic pottery containing bright fresh veggies, chopped to perfection. Then Bistro Cooking by Patricia Wells caught her eye, and she took it down. Some pages were stuck together from previous cooking nights, but the one she turned to, the most splattered of all, was the one for Onion Soup au Gratin, the recipe that had taught her the importance of cheese quality. No mozzarella or broken string cheeses with- maybe- a little lacy Swiss thrown on. And definitely none of the "fat-free" cheese that she'd tried in order to give Calvin a rich dish without the cholesterol. No, for this to be great, you needed a good, aged, nutty Gruyère from what you couldn't help but imagine as the green grassy Alps of Switzerland, where the cows grazed lazily under a cheerful children's-book blue sky with puffy white clouds. Good Gruyère was blocked into rind-covered rounds and aged in caves before being shipped fresh to the USA with a whisper of fairy-tale clouds still lingering over it. There was a cheese shop downtown that sold the best she'd ever had. She'd tried it one afternoon when she was avoiding returning home. A spunky girl in a visor and an apron had perked up as she walked by the counter, saying, "Cheese can change your life!" The charm of her youthful innocence would have been enough to be cheered by, but the sample she handed out really did it. The taste was beyond delicious. It was good alone, but it cried out for ham or turkey or a rich beefy broth with deep caramelized onions for soup.

Even if the girl were me, the guy in the story isn’t Hunter. The guy in the story knows all about anatomy.” “Hunter is taking anatomy,” Summer said. My scissors stopped their progress across the magazine page, and the metallic scrapings of Summer’s scissors and Jordis’s filled my ears like alarm bells. I forced myself to start cutting again before they noticed I’d stopped. “No, he isn’t,” I told Summer. “He’s a business major. Why would he take anatomy?” “I don’t know,” she admitted, “but I saw his anatomy book on his bed when I went to Manohar’s room yesterday.” “And why did you go to Manohar’s room yesterday?” Jordis asked with as much innuendo as her Danish accent would allow. “Oh, it was nothing like that,” Summer assured her. “I was pacing in the hall outside his room-“ “Because you just happened to find yourself three flights up on a men’s floor for no apparent reason,” I played along. Laughing, she put her hand over my mouth. “-and he called me inside because he was making mulligatawny and wanted me to sample it.” Jordis and I cracked up, careful to move our sharp scissors aside before we doubled over laughing on the bed. Summer smiled ruefully at us. Finally Jordis managed, “You sampled his mulligatawny! Was it good?” “It was okay,” Summer said. “I would have to get used to it.” That made Jordis and me laugh harder. Coughing through it, I asked Summer, “Are you going to sample his mulligatawny again?” Still smiling, she shook her head. “Sometimes mulligatawny is just mulligatawny.” “Oh,” Jordis and I said together.

Life is not the easy option; it never has been. But we were granted it, and all that we are granted, we must rejoice in. There is so much sweetness in life that we cannot taste unless we also sample the bitter, so much more joy we can contain if we are hollowed out by loss and sadness first. Life is a double-edged sword itself. Two sides to every life… and in order to nibble at the happiness of love, we must also sip from the cup of sorrow.

We know Job's faith survived because his reaction to his devastating loss was to worship God: "Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head, and he fell to the ground and worshiped. He said, 'Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I shall return there. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord'" (Job 1:20-21). Let me encourage you and your messed up man, should he be willing, to begin to worship God from your place of brokenness. Tina shares a dramatic story from her work as a music therapist for hospice. One day, as she prepared to leave the hospice floor at the hospital, a nurse called her back to work with a patient in respiratory arrest. Music therapists use music to match the beat of a patient's heart rate, and as the therapist slows down the beat of music, most of the time the heart rate follows, as well as the breathing. At the start of the process, the patient's wife shouted, "Sing 'Amazing Grace'?" Deciding to minister rather than work, Tina sang "Amazing Grace." The patient's distress was overwhelming. He could hardly take in air, and his chest heaved while his wife wept. Right in the middle of "Amazing Grace," The wife once more blurted out, "Sing 'Jesus Loves Me'!" Tina, switched gears and sang, "Yes, Jesus loves me." Tears streamed down the man's cheeks as he sang with her, "Yes, Jesus loves me." His words were broken and he could hardly say them, but in that moment, he worshiped the God who was about to take him home. Whatever you're facing . . . worship.

Carol built her cabin in the wilderness for many of the same reasons as Thoreau, who went to the woods “to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn what it had to teach, and not, when I come to die, discover that I had not lived.” Like Thoreau, Carol was a student of nature and a geographical extension of the wilderness that surrounded her. Both explored a life stripped down to its essentials. They wanted “to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.” Thoreau believed wilderness provided a necessary counterbalance to the materialism and urbanization of industrialized America. It was a place of self-renewal and contact with the raw material of life. “In wildness is the preservation of the world,” he famously wrote. Thoreau was among the first to advocate for protecting America’s vanishing wildlands, proposing that the nation formally preserve “a certain sample of wild nature . . . a network of national preserves in which the bear and the panther may still exist and not be civilized off the face of the earth.” Wilderness preserves could provide a perpetual frontier to keep overindustrialized Americans in contact with the primitive honesty of the woods. In 1872—the same year that Tom and Andy founded Carnegie Steel—America designated its first national park: over two million acres in northwest Wyoming were set aside as Yellowstone National Park. A second national park soon followed, thanks to the inspiration of Sierra Club founder John Muir. He so loved the Sierra that he proposed a fifteen-hundred-square-mile park around Yosemite Valley and spent decades fighting for it. When Yosemite National Park was finally signed into law in 1890, Muir

Lifestyle Networking Look for ways to engage in conversation; give someone a compliment; ask a lot of questions: (e.g. “Great service. Do you love your job?” or  “Cute kids. Where do they go to school?”) Then leave them with a sample and say, “I’ve loved chatting with you today. I would love to leave you with this gift [tell them more about the sample, and what it does]. I promise you’ll love it. If you promise you’ll try it, I promise I’ll follow-up!” Get their name, number, tell them what time you’ll call, and write it on the card you leave with them. When you follow-up say, “How’d you love the product? Before I tell you more about it, I would love to tell you why I’m excited about my business!

Many people report that the greatest fear they face today is the fear of not having enough money to maintain their lifestyle throughout retirement. Does this sound like you? Social Security is still a vital role in retirement income. The greatest benefit Social Security provides is regular income that is guaranteed to increase over time and continue as long as you live. Keep in mind, Social Security taxes are just that – taxes. As a result, a worker’s retirement security is entirely dependent upon political decisions. Nevertheless, for now, this benefit makes Social Security one of the most valuable sources of income during one’s retirement. Unfortunately, most Americans do not know much about Social Security. They know even less about how to maximize the benefits that may help sustain them throughout retirement. Whether you are depending upon Social Security to make a significant impact on your retirement income or just a part of your entire financial portfolio, it would be wise to understand which claiming options are available to get the most out of your Social Security income. Even in these tough times and volatile markets, we help our clients take a comprehensive approach to their retirement planning. We offer a complimentary service that we call Social Security Maximization or SSI Max. There are hundreds of ways to claim your Social Security, but which one is right for you and your family? One simple mistake or misjudgment of the program can cost you thousands of dollars that you rightfully deserve. Download our free eBook: 4 Myths about Social Security Income to learn a few common misconceptions about Social Security Income. Find out your SSI Max Strategy Our team of experts use a proprietary system that links to the government’s official Social Security website. It only takes a few minutes to generate your SSI Max Report. Click here to see a sample report and act quickly to get your very own personalized report. Just schedule a call with me to find out your very own, optimal SSI Max Strategy! Click here to schedule now! P.S. – Be sure to ask me about including a “Shortfall Analysis” in your report. Our clients are LOVING this feature! Seriously! What is it? Our Advanced Case Design team builds a comprehensive financial plan best suited for your specific situation by considering all of your retirement vehicles. This is, without a doubt, the best retirement planning offer you will see in a very, very long time!

We're very excited about our new line of products." John squeezed his wife's hand. "We produce churned butter with sea salt imported from France. And we just started a line of yogurt with cream on top that sold very well at the farmers market." "Try the milk. It's from Ollie, my favorite cow," Jenny interrupted, placing a tray and two glasses on the coffee table. "Did you milk her yourself?" James took a cookie and dipped it in the glass of milk. "My dad says I'm not old enough. Ollie is my best friend. Would you like to meet her?" "I'd love to meet Ollie." James stood up and brushed cookie crumbs from his slacks. "Some of my best friends growing up were cows." James followed Jenny to the barn and Cassie pored over brochures and marketing plans with John and Selma. She liked the design of their butter containers: ceramic pots with black-and-white labels and a cow's hoofprint on the bottom. "And I love the idea of selling your milk in reusable glass bottles." Cassie put down her pen. "We'll have a whole fridge of milk in colored bottles. And we'll put a display of the butter pots next to the bread oven. Customers can sample fresh baked bread with churned butter.

Steve had tried to reach us after our Father’s Day phone call. There was no way I could have realized that, because I didn’t have any mobile phone reception at the cottage. He was back on Croc One and trying to get hold of us via satellite phone. I didn’t know. I wouldn’t be in range again until the next day. We enjoyed our dinner, built a huge fire, and snuggled down for the night. We didn’t hurry ourselves the next day. We meandered west, stopping at a raspberry farm and at the Honey Factory in Chudleigh. They featured a beehive behind glass, and we loved watching as the bees worked on their honeycomb. They never stopped to say, “I wonder what the meaning of life is.” They just kept building. The Honey Factory also featured a plethora of bee-themed products: bee gum boots, bee back massagers, bee umbrellas, and a bee trolley for the kids to ride on. Bindi sampled every single flavor of honey that they had. She bought a wristwatch with a bee on it. Robert picked out a backpack. “Robert,” I said, “that backpack is great. It has bees on it.” “It has one bee on it,” he said, correcting me. “Oh, okay, one bee,” I said, amused at my son’s seriousness. We spent the last hour of the morning at the Honey Factory. As we walked out the door, Bindi looked at her newly purchased watch and said, “It’s twelve o’clock.” We all stopped for a moment and considered that it was twelve o’clock. Then we got into the car and left.

I create not only robots that represent your departed loves ones by incorporating their DNA into robotic form. Morgue verified. I also formulate past historical figures from DNA samples on fossils and objects which I can make into duplicates if I so desire. Can you imagine Hitler, Aristotle and Freud having lunch together without the scientific complexities of time travel? Can you imagine what they could do with today's technology at their fingertips?

Morgue glanced at him as he started to speak. I create not only robots that represent your departed loves ones by incorporating their DNA into robotic form. Morgue verified. I also formulate past historical figures from DNA samples on fossils and objects which I can make into duplicates if I so desire. Can you imagine Hitler, Aristotle and Freud having lunch together without the scientific complexities of time travel? Can you imagine what they could do with a little robotic engineering to enhance their minds and today's technology at their fingertips?

It has not eluded my attention that many around me have elected to mock and deride my adoration behind my back. They anticipate a recurrence of the calamitous escapade that ruined my uncle. If only they could somehow sample the authenticity of my affection! This is no paltry dalliance with a dryad, no trifling indiscretion swollen out of proportion. History will not be imitated; rather, a new standard of love shall be established for the ages. Time will certify my devotion! On this I would gladly stake my very soul!

What If I Love Someone With a Serious Trauma History? This is seriously tough, isn’t it? You have someone that you care about so much that is really struggling with their trauma recovery. You want to HELP. And feeling unable to do so is the worst feeling in the world. You’re at risk of serious burnout and secondary traumatization. Because yeah, watching someone live out their trauma can be a traumatic experience in and of itself. Two things to remember, here: This is not your battle. …but people do get better in supportive relationships. This is not your battle. You don’t get to design the parameters, you don’t get to determine what makes something better, what makes something worse. No matter how well you know someone, you don’t know their inner processes. They may not even know their inner processes. If you know someone well, you may know a lot. But you aren’t the one operating that life. Telling someone what they should be doing, feeling, or thinking, won’t help. Even if you are right. Even if they do what you say…you have just taken away their power to do the work they need to do to take charge of their life. There are limits to how much better they can really be if they are continually rescued by you. …but people do get better in supportive relationships. The best thing to do is to ask your loved one how to best support them when they are struggling. This is the type of action plan you can create with a therapist (if either or both of you are seeing one) or ask them in a private conversation. Ask them. Ask if they want help grounding when they are triggered, if they need time alone, a hot bath, a mug of tea. Ask what you can do and do those things, if they are healthy things to provide. It may be helpful for them to have a formal safety plan for themselves (there are resources for sample safety plans at the end of this book), with what your specific role will be. This will help boundary your role, and keep you from setting up scenarios when you rescue or enable dangerous and/or self-sabotaging behavior. You may need to set hard limits. You may need to protect yourself. This isn’t just for your well-being, but will help you model the importance of doing so to your loved one. Love the entirety of them. Remind them that their trauma doesn’t define them. Allow them consequences of their behavior and celebrate the successes of newer, healthier ways of being. Be the relationship that helps the healing journey.

The Next Go-To Spot. The tender brisket, with a crust as perfect as praline candy, will make you want to brave the rush-hour traffic just to sample it. The sauces are smooth as silk and layered with infusions of spice. Rather than being an afterthought, the sides deserve a life of their own. Margot Salton is a sorceress, wielding her unique mastery over wood and smoke and fire. “Wow,” Margot said. “That’s a damn love letter. Thanks, sugarman74.

Hemingway took his hands off the wheel and spat out of the window. “We’re on a nice street here, ain’t we? Nice homes, nice gardens, nice climate. You hear a lot about crooked cops, or do you?” “Once in a while,” I said. “Okey, how many cops do you find living on a street even as good as this, with nice lawns and flowers? I’d know four or five, all vice squad boys. They get all the gravy. Cops like me live in itty-bitty frame houses on the wrong side of town. Want to see where I live?” “What would it prove?” “Listen, pally,” the big man said seriously. “You got me on a string, but it could break. Cops don’t go crooked for money. Not always, not even often. They get caught in the system. They get you where they have you do what is told them or else. And the guy that sits back there in the nice big corner office, with the nice suit and the nice liquor breath he thinks chewing on them seeds makes smell like violets, only it don’t—he ain’t giving the orders either. You get me?” “What kind of a man is the Mayor?” “What kind of guy is a mayor anywhere? A politician. You think he gives the orders? Nuts. You know what’s the matter with this country, baby?” “Too much frozen capital, I heard.” “A guy can’t stay honest if he wants to,” Hemingway said. “That’s what’s the matter with this country. He gets chiseled out of his pants if he does. You gotta play the game dirty or you don’t eat. A lot of bastards think all we need is ninety thousand FBI men in clean collars and brief cases. Nuts. The percentage would get them just the way it does the rest of us. You know what I think? I think we gotta make this little world all over again. Now take Moral Rearmament. There you’ve got something. M.R.A. There you’ve got something, baby.” “If Bay City is a sample of how it works, I’ll take aspirin,“ I said. “You could get too smart,” Hemingway said softly. “You might not think it, but it could be. You could get so smart you couldn’t think about anything but bein’ smart. Me, I’m just a dumb cop. I take orders. I got a wife and two kids and I do what the big shots say. Blane could tell you things. Me, I’m ignorant.

In the 1990s, Dr Masaru Emoto carried out ground-breaking experiments on the impact of emotional energy on water.11 In one study, he wrote positive and negative words on containers full of water. He then froze samples of the water from each container.

I've never known anyone with the capacity for sugar that Adeena has. She'd demolished her waffles, which she'd drowned in syrup, and then ordered a slice of triple chocolate tuxedo pie, another sugar bomb. If I ate the way she'd did, I'd have lost a foot to diabetes by now. Martha slid our desserts in front of us, and Adeena and I hummed in appreciation after taking our first bites. The lemon icebox cake was cold and creamy, with a background sweetness and a whole lot of tang. As I often did when sampling delicious desserts, I tried to deconstruct what was in it. Graham crackers, cream cheese, whipped cream, and a ton of lemon curd seemed to be the basis of the recipe. Similar to the ginger calamansi pie I'd made, but simpler and no-bake, if I decided to buy the graham crackers instead of making my own. Definitely worth experimenting with, as I had a jar of calamansi curd tucked away in the fridge just begging to be used. I made a note on my phone later, maybe as a summer offering. As per usual when eating out, Adeena and I swapped plates so we could taste each other's desserts. "What do you think, girls?" I grinned at Martha. "Delicious. I love how the lemon cake is sweet and tangy, but you don't go too far in either direction." Adeena added, "It's the perfect counterpoint to my chocolate pie, which is divine, by the way. Rich, creamy, and so satisfying.

Japanese lilies and her beautiful face In a crowded market place, People walked, moved; and quite a few preferred to amble, While I searched for my known space, Where she sells beauty’s earthly samples without too much too gamble, I walked past the busy spaces and the bustling market views, People haggling, a few arguing, It was like life was tasked to seek reviews, In ways pleasing and many a time annoying, Finally I reached there where I wanted to be, And there she was this beautiful maiden, And as she prospected every face, her eyes finally rested on me, For a while nothing existed, as if time its pace had forgotten, Only to be revived back to life, When the maiden at the flower shop said, “Hello, and welcome to the shop of beautiful life,” My eyes moved, my lips shivered and in response I only shook my head, I looked at flowers with different colours, And her eyes followed mine to every spot where they rested, I could be there, with the flowers and the maiden, for many hours, Because at this flower shop, all the flowers only of her beauty attested, She knew it too because the sparkle in her eyes was brewing with confidence, She knew she was like the most beautiful summer rose that ever existed, And I only visited the shop to feel surrounded by this beauty’s appeal so dense, Her beauty was not just a visual act but an experience, where a new appeared as soon as the old exited, She was pure beauty, and maybe my only and my wilful addiction, While I was soaking in this experience of charm and beauty, She tenderly felt my hand trembling with love’s affliction, “Here, look at these new samples of eternal beauty,” She said this with a professional tone and demand, They were small clusters of white charm, Beautiful as anything beautiful can be resting peacefully in beauty’s eternal wand, Peaceful to look at that always kindled feelings warm, It was such a delight to witness and see, Then she silently quoth this, “They are called the Japanese lilies that sparkle like the pearls from the deepest sea, They look like joys suspended on the branches of bliss, These beautiful Japanese lilies bearing the sparkle of the pearl from the deepest sea.” I again nodded my head with a smile, As I looked at them closely, They indeed were clusters of white joy hanging there with a beautiful smile, And I said hurriedly, “certainly!” Then I realised something strange, They were bending downwards, as if gravity pulled them harder, It was nothing like flowers at other shops, so it indeed was very strange, I looked at all the flowers and then I looked at her, And there it was, in her eyes, her beautiful face her overall grace, That the flowers in her shop felt so inferior, Because all Japanese lilies and every Summer flower was but a reflection of her face, And it was difficult to tell whether they were her lovers or she was there lover, But to me, they all shone as the brilliance in her eyes, The rose had offered her its blush, The lies had granted her the twinkling miracle of the night skies, And all other flowers had rendered her eternally beautiful and lush, And whenever they looked at her, The flowers drooped a bit, And maybe that is why I buy all my flowers from her, Because like these helpless flowers I too love her every bit, and thus my love affair with her and her flowers has matured bit by bit! And now neither the flowers nor I can quit, So it is an affair that shall last till eternity and this is how I prefer it, She loving the flowers, I loving her, and as soon as my memory amidst her beautiful memories is lit, Then I am sure, like these flowers, and like me; now she too cannot quit, not even a bit!

You think you did so badly, then?” His look was full of contained smugness. “I’d say otherwise, myself.” “Yeah? We’re you here when I came close to calling him a warmonger?” The phouka tried not to smile. “You came nowhere near it. Surely a warmonger is one who sells war, as a fishmonger sells fish?” “Get stuffed. You know what I mean. You heard that, then? And you still don’t think he’s pissed?” The phouka nodded. “Then either I’m luckier than I deserve, or you’re dumber than you look.” He was delighted with that. “You’re good for my self-esteem.” “The way aspirin’s good for a headache?” Eddi said, and realized he was making her smile. “Precisely. Do you want to dance, make music, or sample a new amusement?” She could tell from his tone what he hoped. “What new amusement?” “Oh there’s a competition just begun, ‘round the other side of the hill, that you might enjoy watching.” “I love when you use that full-of-yourself voice. Lead on, son.

Convenience sampling—testing the waters with friends and family—often leads to false positive results because loved ones tend to adore your idea no matter what. Crowdfunding campaigns—like the one Jibo ran on Indiegogo—pose a similar hazard. Individuals who back such campaigns are often product category enthusiasts looking for bright, shiny new things and are eager to be first to sample them. Crowdfunding campaigns can demonstrate a product’s appeal to such zealots, but they don’t provide data on mass-market demand.

As for the glaze, he took another bite to think as the intense sugar slapped his taste buds. Cream cheese. That would add a tanginess to counter the sweet. He mixed a new glaze, adding a pinch of cinnamon, and spread it on the unglazed halves so they could sample right away. "Should I keep the cherries whole or chop them up so you don't get a giant glob in your mouth?" Jack loved the flavor but didn't always like it when he took a bite and an entire cherry came out. For his taste, it was too much cherry in one chunk. "Chopped. Always chopped.

Jack crouched to meet Bernie and let her sniff him, her tail at half-staff. Jack loved dogs though they hadn't had one in the Julemarked since Pinecone wandered in and stayed. That was decades ago. Bernie gave a quick sample lick of his chin, clearly approved, then went in for the full-body affection, knocking him onto his butt and stepping on his lap, forgetting she was more horse than dog. He couldn't help but laugh and felt he'd passed an important test.

They usually featured multiple church attorneys peppering her with questions. In one of them, she had faced five Scientology lawyers at the same time. They were always men, and there were few bounds about what they could ask. “How long does your period last?” they asked at one point. Another time, she was asked to give a stool sample.

He smiled and left me to my misgivings about Paris Denard. The man had received too many accolades for too little suffering and now wore them like medals of valor everywhere he went. A little more notoriety and his ego would bring him one short step away from the ugly little snare that waits and watches for those too fond of themselves. It is the same nasty little trap that lures the nouveau rich or puerile famous. As fame and notoriety take hold, suddenly you are surrounded with an ample variety of overindulgences available to you most any time. Innocently you begin sampling the ones that do not offend your morals or ethics while secretly eyeing those that do. After a while, the lines become blurred and they all become indulgences that you rightly deserve, a normal part of the avant-garde life style you lead. The compromises become greater and greater until you are so possessed by overindulgence that you are a person owned by indiscretions, and those who provide them. That is the trap. You lose your self, one sin at a time, until those who specialize in sin can make you serve them and do most anything they require you to do to further their own aims. It is at that point many wealthy or famous individuals decide there is no going back, though they are unwilling to continue. They help fill the news and star magazines with the regretful obituaries of people who gave so much, and who were so dearly loved it seemed unthinkable that they took their own lives. They will always be remembered. There will always be gratitude.

Appendix 1 Our Family's Core Values and Mission YOUR CORE VALUES What are the most important values in your family? Do your kids know these are critical? Do both parents agree on the ranking of values? This worksheet will help you develop and communicate your top values. A "value" is an ideal that is desirable. It is a quality that we want to model in our own lives and see developed in the lives of our kids. For instance, honesty is a very important value, for without it you can't have trust in your relationships. Take time in writing your answers to the following questions. 1. When time and energy are in short supply, what should we make sure we cover in parenting our children? List a few ideas. Then circle the nonnegotiables. 2. What are the "we'd like to get around to these" values? These are the semi-negotiables. 3. What were the top three values of each of your families of origin (the family you grew up in)? Father Mother 1. 1. 2. 2. 3. 3. 4. Think about a healthy, positive family-one that serves as a role model for you. What would you say are their top three values? 1. 2. 3. 5. What are three or four favorite Scripture verses that communicate elements of a healthy family? 1. 2. 3. 4. Based on these verses, what are the three or four principles from Scripture that you'd like to see evidenced in your family? 1. 2. 3. 4. 6. What values are your "pound the table with passion" values? What are the ones that you feel very strongly about? (You may already have them listed.) To help you with this, complete the following sentences: More families need to ... The problem with today's families is ... DEVELOPING YOUR FAMILY'S MISSION STATEMENT Besides writing out your core values, you will do well to develop a family mission statement (or covenant). These important documents will shape your family. The founders of the United States knew that guiding documents would keep us on course as a fledgling democracy; so too will these documents guide your family as you seek to be purposeful. Sample mission statement: We exist to love each other and advance Gods timeless principles and his kingdom on earth. Complete the following: 1. Our family exists to ... 2. What are some activities or behaviors that you imagine your family carrying out? 3. Describe some qualities of character that you can envision your family being known for. 4. What is unique about your family? What makes you different? What are you known for? What sets you apart? 5. What do you hope to do with and through your family that will outlive you? What noble cause greater than yourselves do you want your family to pursue? 6. With these five questions completed, look for a Scripture that supports the basic ideas of your rough-draft concepts for your family mission statement. If there are several candidates, talk about them thoughtfully and choose one, writing it out here: 7. Using the sample as a template, your five questions and your family Scripture, write a rough draft of your family mission statement: 8. Rewrite the mission statement, keeping the same concepts but changing the order of the mission statement. This is simply to give you two options. 9. Discuss this mission statement as a family if the kids are old enough. Discuss it with a few other friends or extended family members. Any feedback? 10. Pray about your family mission statement for a couple of weeks, asking God to affirm it or help you edit it. Then write up the final version. Consider making a permanent version of your family mission statement to hang on a wall in your home.

I now know that my grandmother considered herself to be quite the harlot in her day, having sampled the wares of no less than 4 young men before settling on my grandfather. Because he had the biggest-- "Oh! Ronnie's here, Grams, love you! Gotta go!

A Brief Mission Intermission Let’s take a moment to pull together what we’ve learned so far about mission. In the last chapter, I used Pardis Sabeti’s story to emphasize that you need career capital before you can identify a realistic mission for your career. Just because you have a good idea for a mission, however, doesn’t mean that you’ll succeed in its pursuit. With this in mind, in this chapter we studied the life of Kirk French to better understand how you make the leap from identifying a realistic mission to succeeding in making it a reality. Here we discovered the importance of little bets. To maximize your chances of success, you should deploy small, concrete experiments that return concrete feedback. For Chris Rock, such a bet might include telling a joke to an audience and seeing if they laugh, whereas for Kirk, it might mean producing sample footage for a documentary and seeing if it attracts funding. These bets allow you to tentatively explore the specific avenues surrounding your general mission, looking for those with the highest likelihood of leading to outstanding results. If career capital makes it possible to identify a compelling mission, then it’s a strategy of little bets that gives you a good shot of succeeding in this mission. To deploy this career tactic, you need both pieces. As you’ll learn in the next chapter, however, the story of mission is not yet complete. As I continued my study of this topic, I discovered a third and final strategy for helping to integrate this trait into your quest for work you love.

We’ve got things under control here.” “‘We’?” Kerry repeated. “Shouldn’t you be out sampling cake or agonizing over invitation fonts? Assuming you don’t have clients to design interiors for.” “I have clients,” Fiona replied easily, honest joy beaming from her every pore. “Very happy ones. Trust me, after running McCrae Interiors, I can juggle Fiona’s Finds and planning a wedding at the same time with my eyes closed.” Kerry gave her sister a hard time--it was what they did--but she was truly happy for Fiona, with both her new business success and her lovely and loving relationship with their longtime family friend, Ben Campbell. Fiona had sold a successful business in Manhattan to return home and start over. She’d just opened a small design studio in a converted cottage near the harbor, focusing on recycling and repurposing antique and vintage items into something fresh and new. Her designs were both eco-friendly and wallet friendly, and the Cove had embraced her return home and her new business with equal enthusiasm. “Remember you said that,” Kerry commented. “When it’s go time on the big aisle walk and you’re still running around like a crazy person trying to pull everything together at the last second, I don’t want to hear about it.” Fiona batted her eyelashes again as she took an extralong sip on the straw in her glass of lemon water. “I’m the epitome of a happy, relaxed bride. McCrae girls don’t do bridezilla. Well, Hannah didn’t, Alex was lovely, and I’m charming of course.” She looked at Kerry over the tip of her straw, smiling sweetly. “We’ll reserve final judgment until it’s your turn.” “Har, har,” Kerry said, but Fiona was high on wedding crack again so she let her run with it. “Besides, after handling weddings for Logan, Hannah, and the Grace-Delia double do out on that island, this will be a cakewalk. Ha!” Fiona went on, then laughed. “Cakewalk.” “You’re a designer? And you do weddings?” Maddy turned on her stool and spun Fiona on hers until they were facing each other. She gripped Fiona’s forearms and grinned. “Hello, my new best and dearest friend.” “Oh, brother.” Kerry surrendered, tossing her towel on the bar.