I am a scanner. According to Barbara Sher (http://www.barbarasher.com), who coined the term in her book, Refuse to Choose: A Revolutionary Program for Doing Everything That You Love, a scanner is someone who is interested in many things, a person who wants to live many lives. A diver, on the other hand, is someone who can focus in on one thing. Many doctors, scientists, engineers, etc., are divers. They can spend their entire lives delving into their chosen profession. Scanners want to do at least a little of everything. That’s me. I have long considered myself a “Jill of all trades, master of none.” The PC version of that is a Renaissance Woman, like Da Vinci was the original Renaissance Man. He painted, invented, sculpted, drew, and who knows what else he did?
That said, here are some of my interests and loves: cooking (especially baking desserts), cooking low-carb (now that I have high blood sugar), kombucha brewing, internet surfing for interesting things to learn, learning for its own sake, anthropology, travel, cultural exploration (is this just more anthropology?), tutoring (English Conversation for ESL/English as a Second Language students, French, Writing Skills, History), decoupage, cats, writing (blogging, non-fiction, books about my travels), reading (non-fiction, fiction: anything by J. D. Robb, Janet Evanovich, Laurell K. Hamilton, my daughter’s supernatural fantasy/horror stories). More, much more, but that’s what I came up with off the top of my head. I’m sure more will come.
My big conversion van is dead to me. It needs a serious tune-up and fuel filter, so it coughs and sputters and tries to die as I drive it. Beyond that, it drinks too much. This GMC behemoth (Claire calls it the Enterprise because is is a Starcraft conversion...can you tell we like Star Trek?) has the largest V8 engine it can have, so it gets less than 11mpg. Not a good thing in this day of $4/gallon gas. It’s been sitting in front of my door for a couple of months now. I’ve been unable to sell it so that I can buy a smaller car, but now I have been given an idea: raffle it off! This seems to be the latest craze around here. Most everyone likes to gamble, at least a little, and the lure of getting a car for less than $100 is irresistible. My Hispanic neighbor has promised to sell tickets for me where the Mexicans hang out here in Arlington (they like big vans, apparently). His suggestion: let everyone choose one number between 1 and 54, and on a certain date, tell them to watch the Texas Lotto drawing. The last number chosen will be the winner of the van. If I sold tickets for $50 each times 54 tickets that would be $2700 that I could spend on a pretty nice used car. Woohoo! I’m excited at the prospect of finding the Enterprise a new home, and being able to drive again. I’ve actually been walking to UTA (University of Texas at Arlington) and to the store. It takes me an hour to walk the 2.5 miles to UTA, where I’ve been going to school for the past 3 ½ years. Last week on freecycle.org, I asked for a bike, and someone gave me their daughter’s. My neighbor on the other side replaced the brake pads, oiled the chain, made some adjustments, and voila, I now can ride to school! Takes me half the time it did walking. Only I can’t ride in the rain, which it is doing this morning. I’ll be glad to have a car again, but I still think I’ll walk more. It’s good exercise, and saves gas. Good for the climate, too, eh?
