Scream-of-Consciousness

2009-06-20T09:00:00.000-07:00

Brain Cake for English Majors: Billy Collins on Prairie Home Companion

2009-03-30T09:09:00.000-07:00

I must be nuts.
The weather forecast for Yosemite Valley for the 48 hours I will be there is highs in the 40's, lows in the teens, with a 40% chance of snow flurries, and my accommodations are, not to put too fine a point on it, about like "the swamp" from M.A.S.H., minus the still and the witty banter.

I'm taking extra blankets, lots of warm clothing, extra food, extra socks, foul weather and camping gear, and the new camera... in short, anything I can fit in the trunk of a Civic coupe.
Oh, yeah, and the accommodations come equipped with a bear canister.

2009-03-28T22:29:00.000-07:00

New shoes!

I love shoes.
No, I mean it. I really love shoes.
And I just got (as a present, 'cause there's no way I can afford them myself) my first pair of Carrie Bradshaw-worthy shoes. I've been craving a pair of Santanas ever since I borrowed my sister's pink snakeskin stilettos three years ago.

2009-03-13T06:36:00.000-07:00

The fifty-four week eulogy, week 3...

Last night, in honor of what would have been Dad's 74th birthday, my sister and mother and I stayed up late and watched one of his favorite movies, The Pink Panther Strikes Again. This is the one with all the best bits: a long, well-choreographed fight with Cato; the hunchback disguise; the butler who moonlights as a drag queen; the "priceless Steinway", "Does your dog bite?", and the assassins from all over the world converging on the Oktoberfest.

And so, in keeping with that spirit, I thought I'd post a list of random things that Dad loved:

- The frozen whipped pineapple concoction that Dole sells outside the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse at Disney World.
- Musicals. Particularly South Pacific, Cats, Les Miserables, and Man of La Mancha.
- No, I mean he *really* loved Cats. I think he saw it something like six times on stage.
- Kevin Kline's performance as Otto in A Fish Called Wanda. He thought Kline was so perfect in this, he refused to watch him in any other movie.
- Used book stores. The funkier, mustier, and more labyrinthine, the better.
- Reading. He burned holes in his pillows not once but TWICE, falling asleep reading with the pillow too close to the lamp. The second time it happened, he actually tried to hide the pillowcase because he was embarrassed it had happened again. Oddly enough, the concept of getting a lower-wattage bulb didn't occur to him.
- Other people's pets. He had two dogs that he had loved more than any other, Pudgie and Sancho, but when frequent travel or other circumstances made it impossible for him to have a pet of his own, he would adopt other people's and give them alternate names ("Adolph", "Key Lime", and "Ugly", for example... "Ugly" being his name for my dog).
- Singing. At the drop of a hat and acapella, in the car, on a boat, with a goat, frequently in public, and once even in a museum. And he almost never remembered the words.
- Going out to dinner.
- His family.
- Bad jokes. "My uncle was killed by a weasel." "Oh, that's horrible!" "Yes. He was sitting on the railroad track and he didn't hear the weasel."
- Pelicans. Seagulls. Parrots. If it was loud, ungainly, obnoxious, had feathers, and lived near the sea, Dad would feed it.
- Bertrand Russell.
- Hemingway.
- Laurel and Hardy.
- Sailboats. Dad couldn't drive past a marina without stopping to walk around, look at which boats were for sale, and do the nautical equivalent of kicking the tires.
- Telling stories.

Sancho

Dad and Aidan

2009-02-27T06:27:00.000-08:00

The fifty-four week eulogy, week 1...

Fifty-four weeks from today, on what would have been his 75th birthday, I will give the eulogy at my father's memorial service. It is not a simple task. Beyond everything else he was - adventurer, naturalist, diver - Dad was a writer, and as such, he was obsessed with perfection. And so I have fifty-four weeks to craft a piece that will do justice not only to Dad's life and work, but his mania for le mot juste as well. Which, of course, has nothing to do with the scheduling.

2008-12-20T16:38:00.001-08:00

Why I keep insisting that the best Christmas carols come from Poland...

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Translation:

God is born, power trembles,
The Lord of the Heavens lies bare.
The fire is renewed, brilliance dimmed.
The infinite has boundaries.
The spurned king covered with glory,
The mortal king of all ages.
And the Word became flesh
And dwelt among us.

In a miserable stable He was born,
A manger they gave Him for a cradle.
Who is He? What surrounded Him?
Cattle, shepherds and straw.
You poor people had the privilege
To greet him first, before the rich.
And the Word became flesh
And dwelt among us.

Raise your hand, our child God,
And bless our dear fatherland
With good advice, with good times
Support our country with your strength,
Our homes and all we posess,
And your villages and your cities.
And the Word became flesh
And dwelt among us.

Bog sie rodzi, moc truchleje
Pan niebiosow obnazony;
Ogien krzepnie, blask ciemnieje,
Ma granice Nieskonczony;
Wzgardzony okryty chwala,
Smiertelny Krol nad wiekami,
A Slowo Cialem sie stalo
I mieszkalo miedzy nami.
Wzgardzony okryty chwala,
Smiertelny Krol nad wiekami,
A Slowo Cialem sie stalo
I mieszkalo miedzy nami.

W nedznej szopie urodzony,
Zlob Mu za kolebke dano;
Coz jest, czym byl otoczony?
Bydlo, pasterze i siano.
Ubodzy was to spotkalo
Witac Go przed bogaczami.
A Slowo Cialem sie stalo
I mieszkalo miedzy nami.
Ubodzy was to spotkalo
Witac Go przed bogaczami.
A Slowo Cialem sie stalo
I mieszkalo miedzy nami.

Podnies reke, Boze Dziecie,
Blogoslaw Ojczyzne mila,
W dobrych radach, w dobrym bycie
W spieraj jej sile Swa sila,
Dom nasz i majetnosc cala,
I Twoje wioski z miastami,
A Slowo Cialem sie stalo
I mieszkalo miedzy nami.
Dom nasz i majetnosc cala,
I Twoje wioski z miastami,
A Slowo Cialem sie stalo
I mieszkalo miedzy nami.

2008-10-15T06:39:00.000-07:00

Is breakfast with the houseguests a little awkward?
Feeling a little guilty that your guest bed is too short and as hard as iron?
Why not feed them ProKrusteaz?
Yes, ProKrusteaz pancake mix - for mornings that might otherwise be a little tense.

"Dad, please pass the ProKrusteaz?"
"What's the matter? Someone chop your legs off?"

(If you don't get the joke, click here.)

2008-09-26T06:05:00.000-07:00

Nostalgia is a funny thing. Take, for example, this wallpaper sample, now proudly framed above my kitchen window. My aunt and uncle had this wallpaper in their kitchen throughout my childhood, and the breakfast table had bright yellow vinyl swivel chairs to match. Child of the 70's that I am, I thought it was fabulous. And, since my dad was always moving us from house to house every year or so (not sure if it was a real estate thing or a tax thing or simply a bored gypsy thing), Aunt Mary and Uncle Wally's house was the place that felt most like home, because it never changed. It always smelled the same, felt the same, looked the same.
Until they changed the kitchen wallpaper on me.
I was horrified. They simply weren't allowed to do that.
So imagine the look on my face a few weeks ago when I opened a present containing one of my aunt's recipe books, and found this folded inside. My cousin discovered it when he was cleaning their basement.

2008-09-21T06:21:00.000-07:00

Marooned!
Poor little Lego pirate. Marooned on a tiny island, on a sea of coffee-buttercream frosting.
And, yes, the color of the frosting almost exactly matches the lighter fronds in the palm trees.
Because Brandon's birthday happens to fall on Talk Like a Pirate Day, and theme parties are fun.
(Please note plastic sword stuck in the sand.)

2008-09-15T06:06:00.000-07:00

Bouillabaisse the traditional way... cooked over an open wood fire on the beach...

Mostly to see if I could do it, but also as an early celebration for Brandon's birthday this coming Friday, I made bouillabaisse over a hardwood (hickory, mesquite, and oak) fire on the beach on Saturday. After I finally got the fire lit (there being a strongish wind and me being somewhat averse to the concept of lighter fluid), the following items went into a big, big pot...
...twenty cloves garlic; two very large leeks; a handful of fennel seed, thyme, and rosemary, and the peel of one orange; five pounds of organic tomatoes; one entire bottle of chardonnay; two pounds of firm white fish fillets; two pounds of clams; two pounds of squid; four pounds of largish shrimp; sea salt; and saffron.
It could have done with a bit more pepper and something smokey in it... smoked paprika, for instance... but on the whole, it turned out pretty well.

2008-09-03T06:16:00.000-07:00

If you have a second, go check out my favorite webcomic, Dave Lowe's Paraabnormal. And if you have a few minutes, go back and scroll through his archives.
Here is today's panel, which literally made me snort coffee onto my keyboard...

2008-09-03T06:08:00.000-07:00

You won't often catch me writing about my work.
I learned that the hard way at my old job, when my boss said to me one day, "I'd better not make you mad, because I don't want to read about it on your blog again." And, when you work with children, there are always concerns about keeping their lives private and well away from the internet. But, occasionally, there are stories that need to be shared, because they are too damned funny not to.
Like yesterday, for example: I've been breaking in a new pair of classroom shoes, and toward the end of the day I had taken them off momentarily to relieve my blistered heels. One boy, who is not quite four, started staring at my feet. Finally, he looked up at me and said, "I don't like pink toes."
I said, "Excuse me?"
He said louder and more slowly, "I don't like pink toes."
"Oh, do you mean that you don't like my nail polish?"
He nodded his head. "I don't like pink," he explained.
"Actually, it's mocha frost," I said.
He made a face. "I don't like mocha frost."
"Well, do you think I should re-paint them then?"
He nodded his head very seriously. "Yes."
What color do you think I should paint them instead?"
He deliberated for a moment, and then, very decisively, said, "Purple."

2008-08-21T05:59:00.000-07:00

Fourteen weeks, one trip to Tahoe, one trip to Oregon, one trip to Chicago and four trips to the endodontist, one wedding, one funeral and two accordions later... (...or, what I did on my summer vacation.)

It's been a busy summer. Two weeks after graduation, I started my first teaching job, so my daily schedule has been: up at 5, go to the Y to work out, then school, then a few hours at my office, then errands, home around 8ish, walk the dog, eat dinner, and crash. As I said to a friend recently, "Sometimes I've just got to jump into a crucible to test whether it's hot enough."
Somewhere in there I managed to get to Oregon for my annual "I'm not going to do a damned thing all week but float in the pool with my book, and I'm only getting out to play cards with Grandma" vacation. And my Aunt Mary died, which meant a trip home to Chicago (yes, I still think of it as "home", just as Oregon is "home" and Dallas is "home"... home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.**) I can't say much about my Aunt's death yet. It's too soon, and death is a loaded subject for me anyhow. It is, for the moment, sufficient to say that she was my second mom. But the funeral was lovely, in its own way; everything well-chosen and appropriate. As I wrote to my dad, the only fault I think she would have found with anything was that she would have said there weren't enough sweets on the buffet table back at the house. She would have rummaged around in the kitchen for a minute and pulled out two coffee cakes that no one knew were there. The nice thing was that Cole and I got to reconnect with family we hadn't seen in ages, and in the afternoon we all sat under the tent in the backyard listening to Johnny play the accordion.
Which, with help, I managed to get on video.
I'll post a photo or two of my Aunt later.

**Robert Frost. Look it up.

2008-05-16T06:01:00.000-07:00

Io triumphe!

The problem with having your eventual success treated by kith and kin as a forgone conclusion, is that it tends to cheapen the actual victory. It may have been inevitable, but it was still damned hard work.

As I was driving south yesterday for the fifth-to-last-time (yes, I'm bloody well counting), I reflected that the ancient Romans had the right idea.

When a Roman general had a great martial victory, he was awarded a triumph by the Senate. He would ride into the city in a chariot, crowned with laurel, his procession led first by the senators, a few massive carts laden with the spoils of war, trumpeters, flute players, a white bull for sacrifice, his captives in chains, maybe a couple of elephants if they were in season. Behind him stood a man whose only job it was to whisper in his ear, admonishing him to remember he was still, in fact, mortal. (Respice post te, hominem memento te...) Which can be easy to forget when the cheering crowd is showering you with flowers and your soldiers are marching behind you shouting Io triumphe and singing, you know, paeans and stuff.

Which, I whined into my cellphone, is how I would like to celebrate my graduation next Saturday. What, after all, is Ziggy in a mortarboard compared with a few hundred Carthaginians or Gauls in chains?

Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero pulsanda tellus.
Now is the time to drink, now the time to dance footloose upon the earth.

Where's my purple toga?

2008-05-09T07:35:00.000-07:00

Almost done...

386 hours and 25 minutes until graduation.

I'm down to 16 written pages (out of approx. 500) and 18 illustrations (out of 156) still to complete, and my orals are at 2:00 on the 22nd.

(Cue incredibly cheesy theme music.)

2008-04-29T18:14:00.001-07:00

Survived the first day of exams (I think).

It was a bit surreal. I ran out of time not from skylarking, or counting bricks in the wall wondering how in the hell I was going to frame a decent answer, but simply because I couldn't write fast enough. For the first time in my life, I picked my four-out-of-seven essay questions in the first six seconds, clicked my lucky orange pen, and started writing. The three hours raced by, and the only reason I was able to complete the fourth question was that we were given an extra twenty minutes grace.

The problem being that I got so bogged down in minutiae, I may have glossed over the more significant points too quickly. Too many trees, not enough forest, so to speak. One might even call it tangential.

In other words, nothing at all like having a conversation with me.

This wouldn't happen if I weren't so violently allergic to outlining. But it gives me hives.

2008-04-17T21:41:00.001-07:00

My friend Doug sent this to me earlier today, and it was too good not to share. I seriously need this one on a tee shirt.

2008-04-16T06:42:00.000-07:00

Alright, dear readers, I'm desperately needing a good laugh.

Writing to deadline and finals prep have got my brain in evil twisted knots, I'm not sleeping, and I'm consuming more coffee than I have since the spring of '96 (no, I wasn't sleeping *before* I started od-ing on the coffee, honest), and the combination of stress, caffeine, and poor nutrition are making my stomach acids feel like Kilauea on a bad day.

So here's a challenge for you: email me the funniest damned *original* pick-up lines you can think of... the quirkier and more obscure the better... and I'll post them all here next week.

Here's one to start you off with:

"Hey... did you ever wonder what went on behind the scenes with Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels?"

2008-04-06T16:03:00.000-07:00

From The Onion: Dr. Seuss weighs in on film adaptations of his work...

Here is an excerpt, but please go read the whole thing:

"Why it's simply an outrage—a crime, you must judge!—
To crap on my books with this big-budget sludge.
My books are for children to learn ones and twos in,
Not commercialous slop for Jim Carrey to ruin.

"Have you no respect for the gems of your youth?
To pervert them on screen from Taiwan to Duluth.
Even after you drag my last word through the dirt,
I know you, you pirates,
You'd cut out my heart for a "Thing 1" T-shirt. "

2008-04-04T15:47:00.000-07:00

Student teaching is DONE.
Today was the final day of my five weeks of student teaching. That requirement has been COMPLETED. Yes, there is actually something I can check off my thrice-damned list of everything I have to do.

Brandon is in Santa Barbara for the weekend, so now begins a sixty-hour writing marathon (minus about fifteen hours for sleep and caffeination) to see just how much I can accomplish before I go back to class on Monday.
Which brings me to my favorite Robert Louis Stevenson quote:
"Writing is easy. All you have to do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until blood forms on your forehead."
Anyone who wants to bring Chinese takeout to my door will receive my everlasting admiration.

In other news, I've started making a list of everything I'm going to do, starting on May 25th, when I have a life again. Things like, oh, go to the gym. Fly my kites. (They're dusty.) Get a big stack of actual books from the library... ones with real pages. This year, the only non-Montessori-related books I've been able to "read" are the ones on cd I've been getting from the library to keep me from overdosing on npr during my 13-hours-per-week commute. You can imagine how this tortures me. Finish unpacking the rest of the moving boxes, because I still cannot find either of my brown betty teapots. Simple things.

2008-03-30T13:22:00.000-07:00

We have left the abode of stress and mild panic and have moved on to the realm of sheer terror and profound despair. It is no longer a question of how little sleep I can get by with in order to complete my work; it is now a question of will I, or will I not, be able to graduate.
I'm not sure I can do this.
Written exams begin four weeks from Tuesday, and I still have roughly one hundred pages to write and/or edit (not to mention the fifty illustrations to complete) before then.
Not that four weeks from Tuesday is the actual deadline for said work; there's no chance that *any* of it will be completed by the actual due dates. Four weeks from Tuesday is simply the last-ditch, not-actually-failing-the-course deadline.
Never let it be said that I don't know how to fail spectacularly.
All I can say is, if I somehow manage to survive this and actually graduate 55 days from now, I want big freaking rum drinks and a trip to Disneyland.
::sigh::
Alright, back to the dreary brechtian wasteland that is my desk...

2008-03-27T17:23:00.000-07:00

Twenty-minute frou frou mac-n-cheese...

With my insane 80-hour weeks trying to finish school--and all the end-of-the-year writing that entails--without completely ignoring my job, I don't have a hell of a lot of time (or energy) to spend in the kitchen; Easter dinner this year was risotto and lemon cake rather than the 8-course feasts I usually prepare. Comfort food for me is anything with profound quantities of dairy, having grown up in Wisconsin, but living with someone allergic to cows' milk rules out most hot cheese entrees. Until now.

1# pasta, celentani or similar
4 oz chevre
4-5 oz feta
1/2# frozen spinach (So there's green in your food. I hate making @#$%-ing salad.)
lump of butter or margarine
1/2 Tbsp Penzey's Greek seasoning blend (or, liberally add salt, lemon peel, garlic, oregano, pepper, and marjoram to taste)
1/4 c milk (goat or soy is fine)

Boil the pasta. Dump it into a colander. In the same pot (so you only have to dirty one), melt the butter and saute the frozen spinach in it until it is no longer frozen, along with the seasoning. Add the cheeses and milk and stir until melted and smooth. Toss the pasta into the sauce. Add a little more salt if needed.

2008-03-21T07:37:00.000-07:00

Peep Show!

Who would have thought that sugar-covered marshmallows could be so darned naughty?

2008-03-16T16:11:00.000-07:00

salve, discipuli...

Transcribing lecture notes in order to work on some theory papers for class (Freedom and Discipline, the Development of Independence, the Development of the Will), I came across a couple of things that did not, upon reflection, sound quite right.

I have a bad habit of taking down lectures word-for-word, a skill I acquired while serving seven years as the recording secretary for a board of directors ethics committee. And I have trained myself to write these things down more or less without questioning them.

The act of transcribing, however, involves reading what I have written, and this occasionally leads to shouting at the notebook propped up on the copy stand next to my computer.

For example: "Discipline" is not, in fact, derived from the Greek, and "disciple" is not a Greek word meaning "one who follows". After reading this, and then diligently mopping up the puddle of hot Lapsang Souchong I had just snorted all over my keyboard, I looked it up, just to be certain. Two different sources.

I'm not *even* going to talk about the bastardization of Dante.

2008-03-13T11:00:00.000-07:00

It's crunch time.

My written exams are in 47 days.

Between now and then, I have to write my last eight theory papers, write and illustrate fifty more maths and language presentations, complete my last two weeks of teaching assisting, and put in one hundred and forty hours of work at the office. I also have to get at least 35 hours of sleep per week and do laundry and eat occasionally, preferably something that is (a) hot, and (b) not obtained at a drive-up window.

Assuming I accomplish all of this without (c) accidentally overdosing on caffeine, (d) going mad, or (e) running away from home to join the circus, I take my oral exams ten weeks from today and graduate two days after that.

At which time I plan to throw a bit of a bash to see if I still have any friends left.

2008-03-04T23:37:00.000-08:00

It's a bad day for Wisconsin.

First, Bret Favre announced his retirement.
Lest you think my appreciation for Favre is based solely on granfalloonery, here are a few stats shamelessly bastardized from Wikipedia, that great repository of wisdom arcane and apocryphal:
"Favre is the only three-time AP MVP (1995-97) in NFL history and has led the Packers to two Super Bowls, including a victory against the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XXXI. His records include: most career NFL touchdown passes (442), most career NFL passing yards (61,655), most career pass completions (5,377), most career pass attempts (8,758), most career NFL interceptions thrown (288), most consecutive starts among NFL quarterbacks (253, 275 total starts including playoffs), and most career victories as a starting quarterback (160). And he kept it up (like Nolan Ryan) at an age when he was routinely facing off against rookies half his age.
All this and only one stinking Lombardi trophy.

And speaking of wisdom arcane and apocryphal, Gary Gygax biffed his saving throw. There's a great tribute on my favorite nerdy webcomic. Gygax has the dubious distinction of being the person most directly responsible for the fact that I managed to date *at all* in college.
Come to think of it, to hell with Gygax.

2008-02-20T07:45:00.000-08:00

Literary humor for a cold, wet morning.

I don't know how I missed this movie when it first came out. We saw the trailer the other night when we watched Running with Scissors, so we watched this yesterday after I got home from my 13-hour day.

Briefly... a man wakes up one morning to discover that he can hear a woman's voice narrating his every move and every thought. And then the narrator casually announces that this man is about to die. Naturally, he's a bit perturbed. He goes to a psychiatrist, who diagnoses schizophrenia. So he goes to a literature professor, who devises the following test to help diagnose the situation.

Dr. Hilbert: I've devised a test. How exciting is that? Composed of 23 questions which I think might help uncover more truths about this narrator. Now Howard... Harold, these may seem silly but your candor is paramount.

Harold: Harold. Ok.

Dr. Hilbert: So. We know it's a woman's voice. The story involves your death. It's modern. It's in English and I'm assuming the author has a cursory knowledge of the city.

Harold: Sure.

Dr. Hilbert: O.k. good. Question one. Has anyone recently left any gifts outside your home? Anything. Gum, money, a large wooden horse.

Harold: I'm sorry?

Dr. Hilbert: Just answer the question.

Harold: No.

Dr. Hilbert: Do you find yourself inclined to solve murder mysteries in large luxurious homes to which you, let me finish, to which you may or may not have been invited?

Harold: No. No, no, no.

Dr. Hilbert: Alright. On a scale of one to ten, what would you consider the likelihood you might be assassinated?

Harold: Assassinated?

Dr. Hilbert: One being very unlikely ten being expecting it around every corner.

Harold: I have no idea.

Dr. Hilbert: O.k. let me rephrase. Are you the king of anything?

Harold: Like what?

Dr. Hilbert: Anything. King of the lanes at the local bowling alley.

Harold: King of the lanes?

Dr. Hilbert: King of the lanes, king of the trolls,

Harold: King of the Trolls?

Dr. Hilbert: Yes, a clandestine land found underneath your floor boards.

Harold: No. That's ridiculous.

Dr. Hilbert: Agreed. Let's start with ridiculous and move backwards. Now, was any part of you at one time part of something else?

Harold: Like do I have someone else's arms?

Dr. Hilbert: Well is it possible at one time that you were made of stone, wood, lye, varied corpse parts? Or, earth made holy by rabbinical elders?

Harold: No. Look, look. I'm sorry, but what do these questions have to do with anything?

Dr. Hilbert: Nothing. The only way to find out what story you're in is to determine what stories you're not in. Odd as it may seem, I've just ruled out half of Greek literature, seven fairy tales, ten Chinese fables, and determined conclusively that you are not King Hamlet, Scout Finch, Miss Marple, Frankenstein's Monster, or a golem. Hmm? Aren't you relieved to know you're not a golem?

Harold: Yes. I am relieved to know that I am not a golem.

Dr. Hilbert: Good. Do you have magical powers?

2008-02-18T16:31:00.000-08:00

Never, EVER boast that you are the only person you know who has not had [insert name of random awful respiratory virus here]. That's when it always clobbers you.

The sore throat and runny nose were over quickly, but I've spent the past 72 hours in bed (except for two very brief trips out of the house which couldn't be avoided yesterday), have no appetite, feel like I'm burning up although the thermometer persists in telling me I'm not, and feel weak and dizzy.

Meanwhile I have three papers due tomorrow which are languishing unfinished on my computer because I lack the mental energy to complete them.

Going back to sleep now.

2008-01-18T13:51:00.000-08:00

The old pirate is in Tahiti.

He just called me from Papeete, where the Queequeg is currently moored, and the telephone connection was horrible, but he sounded happier than I've heard him in well over a decade, so happy that perhaps he might actually forgive me for referring to him as "old".

If he were to see this, that is, which in all likelihood he won't, as the French wi-fi cafe in Papeete charges $60 per hour.

He says he's had "the worst weather he's ever had in his life at sea and he's loving every minute of it".

Next stop: the Cook Islands, followed by Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia before reaching Australia sometime this Spring.

Anyway, this one's for Dad:

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

- John Masefield, "Sea-Fever"

2008-01-16T20:30:00.000-08:00

This Just In: The R.O.U.S.'s were real.

For all you Princess Bride fans out there, here's the latest news from Uruguay, as seen in today's Guardian... a 10' long rodent with 12" incisors. So it wasn't just a stuntman in a funny suit after all.

Found: rat the size of a hippo

Here's a picture:

2008-01-11T08:26:00.000-08:00

It's official, the Governor is utterly retarded.

Click here for more details. Or examine this graphic:

2007-12-23T18:38:00.000-08:00

Since it's Solstice, and almost Christmas, I thought I'd post the lyrics to my favorite non-carol.

Amber called her uncle, said "We're up here for the holiday,
Jane and I were having Solstice, now we need a place to stay."
And her Christ-loving uncle watched his wife hang Mary on a tree,
He watched his son hang candy canes all made with red dye number three.
He told his niece, "It's Christmas Eve, I know our life is not your style";
She said, "Christmas is like Solstice, and we miss you and it's been awhile",

So the Christians and the pagans sit together at the table,
Finding faith and common ground the best that they are able,
And just before the meal was served, hands were held and prayers were said,
Sending hope for peace on earth to all their gods and goddesses.

The food was great, the tree plugged in, the meal had gone without a hitch,
Till Timmy turned to Amber and said, "Is it true that you're a witch?"
His mom jumped up and said "The pies are burning!" and she hit the kitchen,
And it was Jane who spoke and said, "It's true, your cousin's not a Christian,
but we love trees, we love the snow, the friends we have, the world we share,
And you find magic from your god, and we find magic everywhere."

So the Christians and the pagans sit together at the table,
Finding faith and common ground the best that they are able.
And where does magic come from? I think magic's in the learning,
Cause now Christians sit with pagans, only pumpkin pies are burning.

When Amber tried to do the dishes, her aunt said, "Really, no, don't bother."
Amber's uncle saw how Amber looked like Tim and like her father.
He thought about his brother, how they hadn't spoken in a year,
He thought he'd call him up and say, "It's Christmas and your daughter's here."
He thought of fathers, sons and brothers, saw his own son tugging at his sleeve,
Saying, "Can I be a pagan?" Dad said, "We'll discuss it when they leave."

So the Christians and the pagans sit together at the table,
Finding faith and common ground the best that they are able,
Lighting trees in darkness, learning new ways from the old,
Making sense of history and drawing warmth out of the cold.

2007-12-11T06:48:00.000-08:00

Need... more... coffee...

The semester ends the day after tomorrow, which means that this weekend I holed up on the couch and wrote two papers and finished twenty-seven Sensorial exercise write-ups... which means that I only have two more papers, one on Deviations and one on Observation, to finish, along with about a dozen Practical Life exercise write-ups. Yesterday I spent a total of eleven hours at school... four of actual class time and seven of practicum and making illustrations for said giganto sheaf of write-ups. Fuel for said day of craziness was one doughnut, one cup of bad doughnut-shop coffee, and one frozen miniature quiche.
Oh, and after class, the director surprised us by announcing we would all have our end-of-term interviews... now-ish.
Around eight o'clock I left school, drove an hour, got home around nineish, made some spaghetti OUT OF A JAR, had a drink, and watched the Simpsons.

I work all day Friday and Saturday (oh, and have my end-of-introductory-period evaluation with The Boss on Friday), choir on Sunday, and Monday I am going to the gym and then come home and do absolutely NOTHING all day but lie on the couch, work on the sweater I'm knitting for my nephew, and watch movies.

2007-11-27T06:49:00.000-08:00

What, you mean I was supposed to study over the holiday?

First day back from Thanksgiving break. M. announces that, contrary to our expectations, he will not be teaching this afternoon. We will.

More or less.

We spent the afternoon taking turns “volunteering” to give material demonstrations in front of the class, as we will be doing in front of the examiners in May, the only difference being (a) at least when we do this for our exams, we will know the date ahead of time so we can prepare, and (b) hopefully by then we may actually know what the hell we are doing. Oh, yeah, and (c) our classmates were supposed to offer criticism and feedback after each presentation… the only problem being that everyone was too shy to offer much in the way of helpful critique, as (d) M. was sitting there, and the only thing worse than giving a bad presentation would be to offer a critique and have him disagree with it, and finally (e), when you know you’re about to be in the hot seat yourself, you don’t want to irritate or upset people who will be critiquing you in just a few moments. At least (f) unlike our exams in May, where we will have to draw slips of paper from a bag to determine what exercises we demonstrate, yesterday we got to choose for ourselves.

There was, in the words of Jerry Lee Lewis, a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on. Our class looked like a Parkinson’s support group. I did not shake. I have bombed auditions and first dates, I have lost the key and the tune in front of one of the hottest voice coaches in San Francisco, and I have been the only person in my high school to dress up for Halloween (Betty Boop, freshman year), but I do not shake in front of people.

I went fifth or sixth… figuring I would wait long enough to hear what the most common criticisms were, and thus avoid them, but not waiting so long that the exercises I felt most comfortable with had already been taken by someone else. When it was my turn, I picked something I thought I knew quite well... a Sensorial exercise with a box of lacquered wooden triangles that prepares children for plane geometry. My nerves were solid. I was so careful about making eye contact, not talking too much, maintaining a slow, steady pace and not speeding up, and I actually felt that I didn’t do too badly.

Until M. asked the class if I had done the exercise correctly.

And I was so horrified that the words, “You mean that wasn’t right?” loud and incredulous, escaped my mouth, as if it were possible that he was mistaken.

(He wasn’t.)

2007-11-19T14:01:00.000-08:00

Coming back to my senses...

As December approaches, and I feel the edges of despair approaching with the cold and the waning light, I've begun to realize that I need to launch a preemptive strike against the coming darkness.

Now, it just so happens that the liturgical "theme" for Advent at my church this year is "Come to our Senses", and so over the past two weeks I've been to a number of meetings to discuss evocative ways of awakening the senses both in liturgy and in dressing the sanctuary for the season.

And I have wondered, in a Chris-in-the-Morning kind of way, if maybe I have been going about this business of life in completely bass-ackward a fashion. The writer Isabel Allende described the years following her daughter's death as "centuries filled with the sensation that the world had lost its color and that a universal greyness had spread inexorably over every surface." She eventually discovered that the way through her sorrow was not to insulate herself from this tide of greyness, but rather to fight it tooth and nail with all her senses, feeding them and giving them full breath. Perhaps, I thought, I have been wrong to attempt to smother mine.

And so, this morning, after taking the dog out, I walked downtown through the fog and the drizzle, and went to Peet's to buy a pound of coffee and a box of my favorite lavender-infused Earl Grey, and then walked to Body Time and spent twenty minutes smelling vials of perfume oil before deciding on a custom blend for a bottle of spray-moisturizer. And then I came home and made coffee and omelettes with a fresh hot baguette and goat butter, which we ate while listening to the 1982 George Shearing/Brian Torff/Mel Torme live album.

Which is, all things considered, a fine way to spend a foggy Monday.

And while Brandon and I have agreed not to celebrate Christmas ourselves this year (both of us wanting a respite from the forced jollity of putting up trees, traveling, and figuring out presents), it may just be possible to live deliberately in the midst of--rather than in spite of--the season.

2007-11-15T08:22:00.000-08:00

Hips and brains: the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup of evolution.

"Curvy women -- those who have narrow waists and wide hips -- have a better chance of not only being smarter themselves, but also giving birth to smarter children. Researchers linked lower levels of upper-body fat and higher levels of lower-body fat to a better supply of fatty acids essential to neurodevelopment in women and their offspring. The result may also help to explain male preference for certain body shapes."
(quoted from insidermedicine)

::smug grin::

2007-11-08T21:58:00.000-08:00

The Secret Bread Pudding Recipe.
A number of folks have been asking for this one, and I'm sick of writing it down, so here it is for the last time. This recipe is dedicated to my long-ago Liverpudlian housemate, Sandy. The first time I ever made bread pudding, she looked over my shoulder as she sipped her nasty thrice-microwaved mug of Lipton and said "my, how exotic". The recipe has changed a bit since then. Obviously, the better your ingredients, the better it will taste. Use imitation vanilla flavoring and I will shoot you where you stand.

1 large loaf challah or brioche, diced about 1/2" on a side.
1 quart milk, real or soy
6 eggs
1 c raw sugar
1 tsp salt
1 T pure vanilla
1 bag semisweet chocolate chunks
1 bag frozen raspberries or cherries
1 log marzipan, quartered lengthwise and then sliced about 1/4" thick.

Mix. Put in large baking thingy. Bake at 350 for about half an hour, or until the center is springy instead of squodgy when you prod at it with a finger. That's it.

2007-11-05T07:52:00.000-08:00

Wikiquote and Avoidance Behaviour, with apologies to Douglas Adams for Blatant Plagiarism

When you're working to deadline on four papers (one already overdue), three reading assignments, and twenty presentation write-ups, a terrible listlessness starts to set in at about 2:55 when you know you've consumed all the coffee you can usefully drink that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the pedagogical treatise before you, you will never actually read it, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o'clock, and you will enter the Long Dark Avoidance Behaviour of the Soul.

This is when I begin to randomly trudge through Wikiquote. And, la, the things I do find there. For example, from the MST3K quotes page:

One Hundred Years of Solitude,
One Hundred Years of Solitude!
Take one down,
Pass it around,
Ninety-Nine Years of Solitude!

Just thought I'd share.

2007-11-04T15:47:00.000-08:00

Folks, don't try this at home.

Sunday afternoon. Put groceries away. Set rock-hard plastic tub of Nutrimatic healthy spread that tastes almost, but not quite, exactly unlike butter in the oven to thaw slightly (forgetting that I no longer have a gas oven, so the inside is actually *colder* than the rest of the room). Knead bread dough. Set bread dough to rise. Load dishwasher. Preheat oven for bread. Start dishwasher. Clean counter. Wonder what the ghastly stench is coming from. Discover melted plastic tub in oven, making hot yellow plastic icicles on the racks.

2007-11-01T19:39:00.000-07:00

First Love

"What is that?!?" I exclaimed.
"THAT," my cousin answered, "is Bruce Springsteen."

She handed me the cassette box. I stared at the image on the cover.

"You can tell who it is just by looking at his butt?" I asked.

No, I didn't notice that there were words on the cover. I was nine years old, I was hearing rock and roll for the first time ever, and I was hooked.

Last week, I missed going to a Springsteen concert yet again, as the E-Street played two nights in Oakland. The "cheap" seats were listed at sixty bucks--already way too much money to consider--but they were sold out, and the scalpers were hawking them for four times that. I read the reviews and the set list online the next day and tried not to sulk.

None of which is important, actually, but as I listened to my copy of Live 1975-1985 on vinyl in my living room the other night, the memory came back and I felt like recording it for posterity.

Or, in this case, posteriority.

2007-10-28T20:44:00.000-07:00

"Expansion teams are basically like boy bands."

This was how Brandon wrapped up the conversation as I announced the box scores at the bottom of the eighth as he walked into the apartment after taking our dog out for his evening constitutional. Yeah, it was great that Boston was poised to sweep the Series, but the fact that they were doing so against an expansion team rather seemed to cheapen it. I mean, people were buying tickets for this? What's the freaking point?

The Colorado Rockies... the 'N Sync of baseball. Enjoy, America.

2007-10-27T07:27:00.000-07:00

Manhattan Clam Chowder

I'm not a huge fan of soups in general... mostly because I like to eat with my hands, but also because I've worked in elder care for too long not to have thickened liquids give me the heebie jeebies. I make two exceptions: avgolemono (the Greek lemon-chicken-egg soup that I can more or less throw together in my sleep), and any seafood chowder that doesn't come out of a can. One of my culinary goals, if I can ever get my hands on a pound of fresh conch meat, is to attempt to replicate the amazing conch chowder at a restaurant called The Pelican in Montego Bay. Once, about half my lifetime ago, the old Jamaican waitress known simply as "Mother" gave me the recipe. I've never had the opportunity to try it. Where in the name of all smouldering hells can you get fresh conch in northern California?

Anyway, the red leaves and foggy mornings have given me a hankering for chowder, so I made this the other night.
The secret: smoked bacon and fresh fennel.

1/2 lb. smoked bacon, thick-cut, diced
2-3 onions, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
Sauté together at the bottom of a stock pot until it starts to approach looking done. Add:
1 bulb fennel, thinly sliced (if there is any of the herb attached, add this as well)
Sauté until bacon nicely brown and vegetables translucent and golden, and the smell starts to make your stomach growl. Add:
3-4 yellow potatoes, diced (I leave the skins on)
1 large can diced or crushed tomatoes
the liquid from two cans chopped clams
add to taste: thyme, parsley, tellicherry pepper, crushed red pepper, sea salt, and a little smoky paprika, and a large bay leaf. A half-cup of wine if you like. (If you don't, add the same amount of water so the potatoes are covered.)
Stir, cover, and simmer about an hour. If it looks a little watery, add some tomato paste.
A few minutes before serving, check the seasonings, add the clams, and heat through.

2007-10-25T19:21:00.000-07:00

I had to share this...

Instead of doing homework tonight, in-between stirring the Manhattan clam chowder on the stove and watching Northern Exposure reruns, and trying out Amy Sedaris' cupcake recipe, I had to post this photo. My friend Doug emailed me earlier with the link to his company's annual pumpkin contest. You can see the rest of them here.

2007-10-15T08:28:00.000-07:00

Answer: I'm a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest.
This applies to any question about school, my new job, and/or life in general. I'm too damned busy for words. I have three different magical coffee-producing appliances in my kitchen, one for "really strong", one for "really fast", and one for "lots and lots". At least I'm losing weight. When I actually find time to eat, sleep, or go to the gym, life is good. Oh, yeah, and there's this guy who lives in my apartment that I see every so often. I can't remember his name, but yesterday while I was doing my homework he made me a grilled-cheese and fixed the printer.

2007-09-15T20:09:00.000-07:00

The Desert Island List, Part I

So no shit, there I was, halfway through my 52-mile, 108 minute commute home from school one night last week, stuck in traffic listening to early Tom Waits and thinking, "Wow... anatomical differences aside, if Randy Newman and Bob Dylan got together, this is what their kid would sound like."

Driving three hours a day, four days a week, I end up listening to a lot of music. I've been going through stuff in the cd rack that I'd almost forgotten was there.

So I decided to put together my Desert Island List... the ten albums I would need to have with me if I were ever marooned on anything more dangerous than the reef of solipsism I normally inhabit.

1. One Trick Pony, Paul Simon
essential track: How the Heart Approaches What it Yearns

2. On Every Street, Dire Straits
essential track: The Bug

3. Hymns from the 49th Parallel, k.d. lang
essential track: her cover of Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen

4. The Buena Vista Social Club
essential tracks: Candela, Chan Chan, Viente Anos

5. Legend, Bob Marley & the Wailers
essential tracks: No Woman No Cry, Stir It Up

6. The Blues, Nina Simone
essential tracks: all of them
cheater track: Wild is the Wind (not on this album, but it's too good to omit)

7. Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble Live at Montreux 1982 & 1985
essential track: busy grooving right now... ask me later...

8. Eric Clapton Unplugged
essential track: Layla, and pretty much all of side B

9. The Blues Brothers Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
essential track: Shake a Tail Feather

10. Complete Nocturnes of Chopin, Artur Rubinstein
essential track: Op. 72 no. 1 in e

2007-09-11T21:51:00.000-07:00

So here's what I did after school tonight:
I went to the my team meeting for the Waves to Wine 150 mile bike tour for Multiple Sclerosis.
Because I got a bicycle for my birthday for the first time since I was, what, seven? (It's got a cow skull painted on it!) And because I believe in solidarity. And because the team captain is a friend of mine, she has MS, and she's riding all 150 miles. And because it sounded like fun.
You can check out our team page here.

2007-09-04T11:15:00.000-07:00

Holiday weekends are fabulous for moving-in chores. And since I don't have school on Fridays, it was actually a four-day weekend instead of three. What this means is, while we did not cook out, grill anything, consume seared beef, or goof off, we got a hell of a lot accomplished.
For example:
We went to the salvage yard and bought a fantastic wrought-iron gate to use as a headboard. And, by offering cash instead of plastic, we got 25% knocked off the asking price.
The entire library is organized. Categories established, books on shelves.
I can now walk around the entire apartment without acquiring new bruises, scrapes, or welts.
The couch and carpet are, in fact, visible.
Kitchen: minor appliances in place, magnetic knife bar secured to wall, dining table cleared of random detritus and instead has a lovely bouquet of sunflowers arranged in my great-grandmother's cloisonne vase.
First dinner party: last night. Nikki came over and I made papparadelle bolognese. (Last week I managed poulet basquaise, a bit of a feat considering how many boxes I had to crawl over to get to the stove, but that was only for the two of us, so it doesn't count.)
The oven is still not fixed. Which is annoying, because if it isn't repaired this week, I can't make myself a birthday cake, and that will piss me off. Bought cakes are never as good, and the frosting tends to disappoint.

2007-08-29T09:35:00.000-07:00

Home(?)

We've been back in California, in our new apartment, for about a week now, and although there are groceries in the kitchen, the drinks cabinet is stocked, my shoes and clothes are arranged in my closet, and the bookshelves are earthquake-shackled to the walls, it still doesn't feel like home yet.

Maybe it will take having my first dinner party here, since my kitchen has always been the heart of whatever place I call home, and cooking for people is my favorite hobby (apart from reading).

Maybe it will take finally having all the art up on the walls, instead of stacked in-between boxes. Or actually having the stereo system hooked up, so I can play music on something other than my laptop.

But, very slowly, it's taking shape. I managed to cook two meals in the kitchen before the oven inexplicably stopped working, which means I now need to find a good no-oven-required way to cook the chicken sitting in the refrigerator before it goes bad. Brandon bought me a pink oleander tree for the terrace (I really like oleander), and yesterday I claimed my two surviving houseplants from our old neighbors. And this morning I made some coffee and "Heidi oatmeal" and sat out on the terrace to eat breakfast while I did my homework (because yesterday was my second day of school).

The terrace is the best part of the apartment. It's on the third floor facing west, and looks out over royal and date palms, past the sailboats moored at the marina, a wide expanse of bay, the Marin headlands, Mt. Tamalpais, and the northern span of the Golden Gate. In other words, it's a million-dollar view stuck onto a fifty-buck tenement.

::sigh::

Anyone who wants to come over and keep me company while I unpack boxes is more than welcome. Coffee and drinks are in ready supply.

2007-08-20T06:36:00.000-07:00

13049 miles in 88 days...

We staggered in to my mother's house early yesterday afternoon. As I hugged her, I announced that it was really great to see her, but I was about to lock myself in the bathroom for the next hour or so and have a bubble bath and a cocktail, and I'd see her when I felt like a human being again.
The last few days of the trip have been interesting. After leaving Wisconsin, we hurtled over miles and miles of northern prairie at a quasi-demonic pace.
What have I learned from this northern leg of the trip?
I am sick to death of prairies.
And I don't want to see another damned cow ever again unless it's on my plate.
But...
The Shoshone National Forest, in the northwestern corner of Wyoming, is someplace I will have to come back to and stay longer. Photos later this week... got them developed, still have to scan them. And in the little town of Silvergate, Wyoming, outside the northeast entrance to Yellowstone, is a place called the Log Cabin Cafe which is a must-go-back-there-someday for two reasons: (1) the trout is the best *anywhere*, even better than my mother's. It's prepared so well that you hesitate to squeeze a lemon over it because it will detract from the flavor. And (2) the stuffed moose head on the wall has yellow flowers sticking out of its nostrils.
As for Yellowstone... yeah, the geysers and the herds of bison in the middle of the road were cool, but what I really liked were the Sulfur Cauldron and the Mud Volcano (again, photos soon).
And now the trip is over, and tomorrow we drive the last six hours home and start hauling everything we own out of storage and putting together our new apartment.
Today, however, will be blessedly free of driving and plans... today there is only the morning latte in the hot tub, and swimming, and getting new lenses for my glasses, since one fell out the window of the car somewhere in Wyoming. And mom's grilling wild salmon for dinner.

2007-08-14T09:52:00.000-07:00

WARNING TO NICOLE, DO NOT READ THIS.

An abode of dragons... or, "You can never go home again, Oatman... but I guess you can shop there."

So no shit, there I was, driving up Highway 51 North through Hazelhurst and Minocqua, wondering what plague of disease-ridden zombies destroyed my hometown(s).

I am a reluctant city mouse. I've lived in glittering metropolitan cesspools all of my adult life, but I grew up in a town that had, at its most recent census, 4800 people in it. During the nineteen years since I left, I have spent countless hours dreaming of the lakes, the forests, the snows, the cry of the loon over the water at dusk. I have bored my friends to tears with quasi-proustian descriptions of Danish kringle, deep-fried cheese curds, beer-battered walleye, and ice cream so rich you could actually taste the butterfat.

This morning, I woke Brandon up at 6:30 a.m. (something you simply do not attempt without a Damned Good Reason and some kevlar, and even more dangerous when he's sick) so we could start the last hour of the drive north.

Here is an abridged catalog of things that Are Not As They Were, in geographical order from south to north:

Northern Lights Summer Playhouse: still running, but looking rather seedy and badly in need of a fresh coat of paint.
Warbonnet Zoo: long gone, now a firework sales barn.
The house at Lost Lake: couldn't find it.
The house at Lake Katherine: found it, but wished I hadn't. The less said, the better.
And speaking of the lakes: they're all about 8 feet lower than they used to be. And not temporarily, either; apparently it's been happening over the last few years.
The bizarre supper club on the highway over near the elementary school - the one with the scary plastic life-size wildlife dioramas behind picture windows off the dining room, and the five-foot high cranberry juice fountain: gone.
The sweet shop where Cole and I used to go after school to get chocolate-peanut butter bark and penny candy: now a tattoo parlor.
The awesome kringle bakery: gone.
Dan's Gay Nineties fudge shoppe: now the parochially tame Dan's Minocqua Fudge.
Circle M Corral, far and away the coolest fun park anywhere in America: living up to its ghost town aesthetic at last... long since abandoned and choked with weeds.
The Rexall Drugs in Woodruff that, even in the 1980's, still had an actual soda fountain where you could get a cherry phosphate or a chocolate malted: gone.
Our Lady Queen of the Universe Catholic Church: closed, building for sale.

::whimper::

2007-08-14T09:45:00.000-07:00

An abode of dragons, part two... or, so here's what's left of the hometown I remember:

Charlie's Cheese. They still have the best darned ice cream this side of heaven, and a single scoop is roughly the size of a slo-pitch softball.
Minocqua-Hazelhurst-Lake Tomahawk Elementary, home of the Firebirds.
Book World. Spang's Pizza. The five and dime. Torpy Park.
The Bearskin Trail.
The Paul Bunyan Cook Shanty.
The Min-Aqua Bats.

2007-08-10T08:20:00.001-07:00

Felted merino wool backpack for sproglings!
Here, at long last, is the backpack I promised to make for my charming nephew V.

2007-08-03T15:33:00.000-07:00

Thought for the day...

I don't swim often anymore. There was a time when I swam a mile every evening, and I miss the body-memory of my arms cutting the water efficiently, without wasted effort; I once *woke up* swimming lengths at the club, looked up at the clock, and realized I'd been asleep for a little over ten minutes and had just kept swimming. How could I be certain that I had actually fallen asleep? I was dreaming.

But pool-water and naturally-occurring water are different creatures.

Here in Burlington, at the edge of Lake Champlain, I've been swimming every day, and I've rediscovered body-memory I had almost forgotten. In the morning, when the current comes in toward the shore at the north beach, and the ferries send large waves across my path, I find it coming back so easily; timing my stroke to the intervals between waves, remembering to breathe at *this* point in the wave when swimming out against the current and *that* point in the wave when swimming back. Then there is nothing else in the world but the green cool water, and the shriek of the gulls, and my arms cutting the water, over and over again.

2007-07-31T07:14:00.000-07:00

Catching up...

It's Tuesday morning and I woke up in NYC to the sound of a jackhammer outside my window at seven a.m. Yesterday we drove through seven states in thirteen hours, which I don't recommend, but a good chunk of it was on I-81, which runs up the spine of Virginia with the Adirondack mountains on your left and the Shenandoah on your right, which I *do* recommend. Also, gas stations in this part of the country occasionally have vending machines that sell live bait. No fooling. Instead of pressing A-6 for a diet coke with lime, you can get a box of extra-fancy night crawlers, red worms, catfish dough or chicken livers for $3.

Over the last two weeks, we've been to San Antonio, the Texas Hill Country, New Orleans, Florida, North Carolina, and now New York. As soon as we leave here, we go to Burlington, Vermont, which will be great. When a city the size of Berkeley is already verging on Too Damned Big, you can only imagine how I might feel about a place the size of New York.

In a word, suffocated.

Although we *are* going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art today, for which I will gladly venture out onto the street and perhaps even the subway. Then we will probably go to the World Trade Center site. And before I leave town, I intend to go to Vandam Street in the Village to see if I can find the warehouse nearest to the fictional 221B.

Unfortunately, a show on Broadway is probably not going to happen, because it's too freaking expensive, and there's nothing by Sondheim currently running, or I'd blow the money anyway.

Thursday afternoon, we will be in Burlington, which means that Friday morning I will start my day at Dobra Tea, and then spend the rest of my day swimming in Lake Champlain and trying to get something vaguely resembling a tan.

2007-07-11T21:07:00.000-07:00

Earlier today, a friend of mine called me from Tuscany (where he is vacationing with his wife) to ask for my recipe for chevre-stuffed mushroom caps. He got my voicemail, so we didn't actually talk, but he did say he was going to try to wing it.

On one hand, I was flattered. No one has ever called me from Italy just to get a recipe.

On the other hand, it's mushroom caps, not nuclear fission. You get some good mushrooms (I like the smaller portabellas), you pull out the stems, mice the stems with some garlic, saute it in butter, and blend into a lump of chevre the size of a large egg with a bunch of whatever fresh herbs looked good at the market. If you want to, you can throw some bread crumbs into it, but I usually don't. Stuff the mixture into the caps and broil them until they look done.

It's sort of like my Dates From Hell (tm). Three ingredients: dates, chorizo, bacon. Pit the dates, stuff some chorizo into them, wrap them in bacon, pin them closed, and broil the crap out of them.

Incidentally, both appetizers go rather well with an earthy red wine.

Damn. Now I'm hungry.

2007-07-11T20:45:00.000-07:00

Notes from the Underground: Part One

This week I'm at a conference in Dallas, working for a company that makes audio recordings (as well as dvds) of all the keynotes, plenaries, and breakout sessions. I don't do tech beyond the occasional sound check; I'm the token Friendly Sales Girl in the booth. The one with the charming smile who is happy to sell you things, give you directions, or fix your cellphone, whatever you need.

Lest the winsome facade should crack, I keep myself amused by thinking happy subversive things.

Take last night, for example: there was an opening ceremony in the main exhibit hall which consisted of 192 flags, one from every nation on Earth, each of which was carried solemnly up to a dais with a microphone, where the country was named, and then everyone said "May peace prevail in [name of country]."

Two thoughts popped into my head damn near simultaneously. The first was that I need a tee shirt that reads "Fuck Lichtenstein!" The second was that I would so love to have had a flag for the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, so I could sneak it into the flag ceremony and hear everyone say, "May peace prevail in the Duchy of Grand Fenwick."

That would have been too freakin' cool.

Bonus points if you got the reference without having to look it up. ;-)

2007-07-10T22:03:00.001-07:00

And now, more smart-ass answers to really dumb questions...

Q: What's your sign?
A: Severe Tire Damage

Q: What's your sign?
A: Scheduled for Demolition

2007-07-04T12:13:00.000-07:00

Cable-knit watch cap

I started out with a basic pattern from Head Huggers. Their pattern was a little small for me, as I wear a men's large hat (yes, we all know, it's the hair). So I had to rip it out (the stitches, not my hair) and start over casting on 99 stitches instead of the 88 the pattern calls for to add one more cable. This meant that I had to change the ribbing at the bottom to k2, p1 instead of k3, p1, but that wasn't a big deal.

The pattern itself was pretty easy; the only thing I didn't like about it was the way they suggested shaping the top. If you're going to do the rest of the hat in a cable pattern, why in the name of all hells would you shape the top with ten rows of straight-across knit stitch? So I came up with the following alternate method. This gives a really neat flame tip to the top of each of the cables, and also preserves the ribbing between each cable.

Following the Head Huggers pattern, stop after row 5 once you get to your desired height (about 7", or 5" from ribbing). Then begin decrease as follows...

Row 1: k1, p2, k6, p2 sts together. Repeat across entire row.
Row 2: k1, p2 sts together, k6, p1.
Row 3: k1, p1, k2, k2 sts together, k2, p1.
Row 4: k1, p1, k2, k2 sts together, k1, p1.
Row 5: k1, p1, k1, k2 sts together, k1, p1.
Row 6: k1, p1, k2 sts together, k1, p1.
Row 7: k1, p1, k2 sts together, p1.
Row 8: k1, p1, p2 sts together.
Row 9: p2 sts together, p1.
Row 10: p2 sts together.

Cut yarn, thread tail through remaining 9 loops, tie off.

2007-06-29T09:44:00.000-07:00

Wahoo!!!
About a minute and half ago, I finished my very first cable!!! And it wasn't difficult after all! (Well, not if you know how to read, and have three arms.) Before we left home, my friend Christina gave me a skein of Blue Sky organic cotton yarn in Cumin. I'm making myself a cable-knit hat for winter. Photos soon.

2007-06-25T09:10:00.000-07:00

And now, a word from our sponsor...

These are the felted merino wool handbags I knitted for Mother's Day. (Finished size approx. 8 x 8 x 5). Thanks to River for giving me the pattern!

2007-06-23T07:29:00.000-07:00

Since I was about eleven years old, I have dreamed in serials. I'm not kidding. It's sort of like having your own dramatic series on cable, with recurring characters, episodic structure, story arcs, the works. Some are canceled after only a few episodes; some last for years and you can probably obtain the boxed sets on amazon.com by now, complete with deleted scenes, director's commentary, and a whole mess of special features. ("Hey! Let's watch one of Lisa's dreams with Spanish overdubbing and Thai subtitles!")

My only explanation for this bizarre "gift" (oh, gee, thanks) is that they usually show up when I'm avoiding writing... i.e. when I neglect to put my overabundant imagination to constructive use, it seeps out into my dreams.

I wouldn't mind it so much ifI got a harmless sitcom or cartoon every now and then; but, no, the latest series (the most recent episode aired last night) appears to be directed by David Lynch.

And, in case you're wondering, I *do* dream in color. Technicolor. How can I tell? Well, my character in this new series has a bad habit of solving grisly homicides. 'nuff said.

[I'm going to use "she" and "her", if you don't mind, because the protagonist, the narrator, and the author are NOT the same person, as any first year lit student should be able to tell you.]

She (the person solving said grisly homicides) is not a detective; she's more a kind of seer or witch, but a reluctant one. In other words, it's not the standard "your grandmother's wedding ring is in the flour canister on the top shelf of the pantry" or "dig under this tree and you'll find the skull of someone murdered forty years ago" psychic hooey. The cops don't call her in when they're stumped (because cops never actually do that); she simply happens onto crime scenes over and over again without meaning to... for instance, while out walking her dog in the park. It's one of those "Oh, crap, not again" kind of things and she doesn't know how it happens and would rather prefer it didn't. Ever.

Her method of discovering the murderer is interesting; her vision suddenly shifts to negative image (like looking at negatives of photographs)... except that she can literally see the heart of everyone she looks at, glowing white hot in their chest, and the killer's heart never looks like all the rest. It's shaped differently.

At which point her vision reverts to normal and she points out the killer to the cops, who never have to decide whether or not they should believe her, because this is television, and the killer conveniently either panics and tries to flee, or flies at her in a rage; in other words, makes it impossible for the cops *not* to arrest them.

One of the victims is, of course, always someone I recognize. Not someone I know well, but someone I can name. For instance, one of the four victims in last night's episode was a young dancer that my sister knows. I've never actually met her, I've only seen a photograph of her, and all I really know about her is her age and her stage name. The others were strangers to me.

Another distinctive feature of these dreams is that the sets are always pretty darned elaborate and cinematic. Last night, for instance, the murders took place in a sunken garden section of the Dallas Arboretum which does not actually exist. The garden was supposedly a recreation of a famous painting by Waterhouse, which likewise does not exist. I'm fairly certain that Waterhouse never painted a large white swan boat made of stained glass, filled with water, floating in a stone pool with water hyacinths. (And, no, for those of you familiar with Waterhouse's work, it looked absolutely nothing like his Chaillot. More like his Narcissus, or the Ophelia by Millais, but with a bit more alizarin crimson.)

I could fill you in on more of the details, but I'd really rather not. Suffice to say that the whole damned thing was so intense, my shriek of "It was her!" actually woke up Brandon.

This morning I'm attempting to relax with a cup of tea while Brandon and Paula are out doing tai chi at the DMA.

If anyone up there is listening, can I please, PLEASE just have a Simpsons rerun tonight?

2007-06-21T20:59:00.000-07:00

"...there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; ... no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; ... And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short...
Aah, to Helle with it; let's polka!"

It is now commonly believed that, if Thomas Hobbes only had a decent pair of dancing shoes and had been fortunate enough to know Jeffrey Barnes or Carl Finch, Leviathan would have been a much happier book, and might even have included a mambo/cumbia/polka soundtrack.

Thursday nights at the Dallas Arboretum, there is music in the outdoor amphitheater overlooking White Rock Lake. The good folks on the Arboretum staff were smart enough to book Brave Combo; Brandon was smart enough to procure tickets; and I was smart enough to pack a picnic hamper and make a batch of sangria.

Gosh, and I'd almost forgotten what it felt like to polka for two hours in bare feet on a muddy concrete sidewalk. (And mambo, and cumbia, and hokey pokey, and chicken dance, and a conga line, and more polka, and...)

The sangria helps. Try it yourself and you'll see.
Mix 1/2 c sugar and 1/2 c water. Slice 1 large very ripe orange, 1 lemon, and 2 limes. Pour the sugar and water over them and let sit a couple of hours. Add 1 bottle bordeaux or similar (yes, I'm on a bordeaux kick right now, deal with it.) and let sit another hour or two. Before serving, add a can of ginger ale.

Before we went home, we stopped by the toad fountain to cool off our aching feet.

It's polka time, people. Dance with us or we'll hit you with a great big stick.

2007-06-07T13:46:00.001-07:00

Grand Canyon, South Rim at Sunset

This is my favorite shot from my first roll in my new (old) Pentax Asahi SLR. I took this with a 200mm lens and realized when I was changing film that I had the dial set on 1000 even though I was using 400. But I kinda like the effect.
What this would have looked like with the right filter, though.

On Monday, we stopped at Carlsbad Caverns. I'm not sure what it says about me that I get my biggest "highs" off of being 1000 feet below ground, ogling rock formations, breathing cave air, or that my second favorite toy, after my camera, is my headlamp.
Rocks are nifty.
Unfortunately, I do not currently have a working flash.
Correction: I actually have two of them, but neither seems to be working properly at the moment, but Brandon has explained that this is due to some quirk of the camera itself and not the flash. Since one of them is a new one I purchased for him as a gift shortly before he bought his first digital camera (timing having ever been one of my strong suits), I rather suspect that he is correct.
In other news...
We got to spend a day with our nephew on Tuesday. (Yeah, his folks were there, but Valliant is the important one.) He's a gorgeous creature. I'm planning on using him as a guinea pig for my first expiriments in sweater making, since I bought a copy of The Sweater Workshop recently and have been itching to try it out on some hapless person. And the virtue of making sprogling-sized sweaters is that, well, they're sprogling-sized, which means that they are finished ever so much more quickly than the adult-sized versions.
Valliant also attempted to wander off with the felted merino wool handbag I had made for his grandmother, and after Meghan admitted that the child has something of a thing for bags, I promised to make him a toddler-sized felted merino knapsack.
He can put bugs in it or something.

2007-06-03T05:56:00.000-07:00

...and I'm back. Although I'm not quite sure from whence or to what.
There's a lot I could say about the last two months... putting everything we own into storage... missing the funeral of Lou, my favorite resident at Mercy, while I was in Oregon... leaving Mercy after seven years (feeling altogether too much like Radar O'Reilly leaving the 4077), and our home after eight, and guess which was harder?... painting and preparing our new apartment for our return (I've now learned precisely how many coats of primer it takes to cover up dark teal)... and then suddenly there were no more goodbyes, only a long stretch of highway.
The first week on the road has been difficult... when you travel in a van converted to a camper, there are a few luxuries that you don't have, like real coffee or a toilet or a shower. If I don't have my morning shower, I get verrrry cranky. Especially when the air conditioning stops working in the middle of the desert in summer. Happily, I managed NOT to kill Brandon, who only ever brings up his Texasness at times guaranteed to annoy me, like commenting how it's not really all that hot out while the sweat is dripping off my legs onto the floor. We *did* have quite a lot of very cold beer, but (a) you can't drink cold beer and drive at the same time, and (b) there's that no toilet problem again. So it stayed in the cooler.
Oh, and the Mapquest road atlas I bought at Half-Price books has now steered us wrong a total of three times... wrong as in having to turn back and ask for directions because the road we are on has abruptly closed, or the road we are looking for is neither numbered nor labeled on the map, or...
But...
I *did* get to spend two whole days sunbathing on a completely deserted beach while Brandon worked with the dissertation coach. And got to see as much of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon as I could possibly want. (Next time we come, we're renting mules and going to Phantom Ranch, *iff* I can manage to get over my terror of bouncing off the wall of the canyon as I fall.)
And before we left home, I convinced Brandon to give me his old SLR, which he never uses since he's Digital Boy. Now I finally have a camera with different lenses and tons of dials and levers to tinker with. I got my first two rolls developed while we were waiting for the van to be repaired yesterday, and one of them actually turned out. I'll scan a couple later this week. I got a few shots of the Canyon I'm somewhat proud of. But now I want to go to a camera shop and look for some filters. Yes, I know I can Photoshop them to get filtered effects, but that would defeat the purpose. It's the difference between "images" and "photographs". It's why I refuse to give up my collection of LP's. It's why I make cakes and pasta sauce from scratch.
A thing worth doing is worth taking time over.
Three months suddenly feels like far too little time to actually see the country.

2007-03-24T08:13:00.000-07:00

Naked Fremen Yoga
(with apologies to Frank Herbert)

There were lean, taut, mostly-naked bodies everywhere I looked. I stared at their faces in the wall of mirrors, half-expecting a sea of blue-within-blue Fremen eyes to stare back at me.
I alone was *not* lean, taut, and mostly-naked. I was wearing a pair of my husband's sweat pants cut off at knee-length and an old University of Dallas Rugby Team ("It's Never Pretty") tee shirt over a swimsuit. I was wondering what in the hell I was doing in a 105˚ room that smelled like hot valerian root extract, standing on a towel, facing a wall of mirrors.
I don't remember much about my first ninety-minute class other than the fact that I was surprised to discover, when it was all over, that I was still alive. That was on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, I went out and bought myself more appropriate clothing... or rather, more appropriate *lack*-of-clothing.
On Thursday, there I was again, standing on a towel in my special yoga skivvies, surrounded by mostly-naked Fremen. (Okay, make that mostly-naked Fremen with hair extensions and interesting tattoos and piercings. This *is* Berkeley, after all.) I don't remember much about this class, either, except I didn't get quite as dizzy, and, when it was all over, was grudgingly ready to admit that maybe this wouldn't kill me after all.
On Friday night, when most people my age in this glittering metropolis were out at nightclubs, trendy restaurants, and movie theaters, I was back again, reciting the Bikram Gesserit Litany against Passing Out from Heat Exhaustion ("I will not faint. Fainting is the pride-killer. Fainting is the little-death that brings total humilitation. I will face my inability to breathe only through my nose while exercising in this sweltering heat. I will permit this hot, sticky air to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the dizziess and the tunnel-vision has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain... what little there is left of me.")
Bikram yoga, for those of you not familiar with the term, is a series of twenty-six hatha yoga asanas done at 105˚ over a ninety-minute period with one thirty-second water break. During this time, you are not supposed to leave the room or open your mouth to breathe. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't have been caught dead there... not only because of my very real fear of *actually* being caught very dead there, but also because it's something of a Vegan Meat Market (tm). But my sister, proud of the fact that, after three months of soothing my grief with carbohydrates and letting depression keep me from exercising, I had recently rediscovered leafy greens and was jogging two and a half miles every morning, had given me a gift certificate for One Month of Unlimited Suffering at the Funky Door Yoga Studio on Shattuck, and I figured, what the hell.
So there I was last night, not going to a movie or having a beer at one of the three brewpubs only blocks from my already conviently-parked car, but breathing through my nose and pushing myself into still more painful contortions. And the scary part was, I was starting to like it.
Now I was getting the hang of this, and I was actually able to focus on proper form and regulating my breath instead of, say, concentrating on not actually going into cardiac arrest. I watched the sweat running down my arms and legs, dripping off my nose, soaking into the carpet under my towel.
("It is by breath alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the breath through the nose in-two-three-four-five-six, out-two-three-four-five-six that the asanas acquire strength, the limbs acquire sweat, the sweat becomes a warning. It is by breath alone I set my mind in motion.")
In my heat-addled brain I began to hallucinate. I realized that these people couldn't possibly be Fremen at all, the way they were squandering their bodies' water. I imagined a horde of actual Fremen zealots bursting into the studio, crysknives at the ready, forcing us all into stillsuits to reclaim our sweat, and then tearing up the foul carpeting soaked with our blood, sweat and tears and wringing every last drop of moisture out of it into catch basins. Smile. Breathe.
9:30 p.m. Class is over. I roll up my mat and my towel and go home.

(note: If you didn't get any of this, read Dune)

2007-03-07T23:08:00.000-08:00

The Quasi-Symbolic Chocolate Croissant
Last year, I was having a conversation with my sister about bakeries and cafes, how the pastry shops you like seldom have good coffee and the good coffee shops seldom have truly excellent pastries, and that I’d been fortunate recently to find a little French bakery in North Berkeley that had both excellent pastries *and* excellent coffee, and was, surprisingly, not at all expensive. “The only thing I haven’t tried there,” I said, “is their chocolate croissant.”
“I thought that was one of your favorites,” Cole said.
“It is. That’s why I haven’t tried it.”
She gave me a funny look. I explained.
“It’s like this: I love this bakery. I want to *continue* to love this bakery. And chocolate croissants are one of my favorite things in the world. Regrettably, very few bakeries do them justice. The chocolate is either too sweet, or it’s overcooked, which makes it bitter, or it’s not tempered properly, and so it’s rock-hard, or—worse yet—they use nutella, which is just plain wrong. And even if they manage to get the chocolate just right, then there is usually a problem with the pastry… it’s frequently too dense and isn’t flaky enough, or it’s too greasy, or something. Bottom line being that, all too often, you end up severely disappointed, and if I order one of their chocolate croissants and it doesn’t live up to my expectations, I’ll fall out of love with my bakery, and I don’t want to risk that.”
Cole just shook her head.
“That’s a really stupid way to live, you know?"

Fast-forward to this morning. I’m getting ready for the Big Interview (tm) with the Director of the Montessori Training Center… the interview that will tell me whether or not I’m going to start my training in August, the interview that, in other words, will tell me whether or not I will be a teacher a year from now. Yesterday, on the phone, Nicole gave me a pep talk that included some of her secret pre-audition tips.

“I know you never eat breakfast,” she had said. “Bad idea. Make sure you get some protein, or you’re not going to have your head together. And make sure you have a cinnamon roll or something sweet so you get the endorphin rush and you’re feeling good.”

So before getting on the freeway to go to the interview, I stopped at my favorite coffee shop in San Leandro to get a cafe au lait (the only protein I can stomach before noon) and a Raisin d'Etre cinnamon roll. And right next to the cinnamon roll in the pastry case was a chocolate croissant. I figured, what the hell.

When it takes all your strength just to get dressed in the morning, choosing a pastry can be a very courageous act.

It wasn't bad, either... maybe a seven.

Oh, yeah... and the interview? I'm in.

2007-02-26T22:48:00.000-08:00

The only good thing about being sick is having someone around to spoil you rotten if you pout well enough. When I was young, it was my mother, who knew the exact proportion of club soda to orange juice, who was never impatient, and who was, unfortunately, a hard act to follow. Dad was lousy at it, try as he might... instead of mixing the club soda and the orange juice, he simply made the canned frozen orange juice with a liter of club soda, and shortly after lunchtime he usually figured I'd been sick long enough, and as long as I was home, I might as well vaccuum the carpet or something.
Brandon at first treated the concept of a sick wife the way he would a foreign television show without subtitles... interesting, but not enough to hold his attention... but over the years has resigned himself to the fact that, when sick, I expect to be waited on and I will be petulant and annoying if I don't get my way. So now he mixes my orange juice, brings me my favorite soups, and fetches me dvds more or less without complaint... that is, when he's here.
Right now, Brandon is is Vermont, and I am suffering.
I don't much mind fixing the food that is in the house, but we're out of juice *and* ice cream, as well as the *good* crackers. All we have in the pantry are the *healthy* crackers.
And it's pissing down rain, and cold outside, and I have to go walk the dog in it, because there's no one else around to do it for me.
And it does me no good to pout, because the only creature around to see is the dog, who doesn't give a damn.
Tomorrow either (a) the dog learns how to drive a stick shift and use a credit card, or (b) I'm trading him in on a St. Bernard.

2007-02-18T16:40:00.000-08:00

It was love at first sight. A Heathcliff-and-Cathy, can't rest until they're yours kind of love. For a stretch of coastline.
Just south of Eureka, in Humboldt County, there is a winding ribbon of State highway called the Lost Coast. About eighty miles long, it crosses the Bear River Ridge, winds through dense forests, along cliffs, ranchlands, river valleys, redwood groves, and black sand beaches.
It was what I always imagined Scotland or Ireland to look like... the cliffs, the cattle, the sea, the fog, and everything so green through the rain. Eventually I did manage to stop quoting Gareth in Four Weddings and a Funeral... "It's bloody Brigadoon!"... and just stared out the window. For the first time, I understood the desire to own land... not to live on, only to possess.

"The only thing missing," I said (needing a Tennyson fix), "is a ruined castle, crumbling off the cliff into the sea."
And there it was... through the fog, about a hundred yards offshore. Not actually a castle, but close enough.

2007-02-12T07:25:00.000-08:00

I guess the biggest news from this weekend was that I took my application to the Montessori Training Center to the post office on Saturday.

It should have been an occasion to celebrate—I had been looking forward to this moment for over a year—but instead it felt hollow. I wanted to go out and do something to mark the event, but Brandon was at work, Nicole was at rehearsal, and Mom was six hours away. So I went to the used book barn, bought a P. D. James I hadn’t read in awhile, and took myself out for a barbeque bacon cheeseburger and a beer. It couldn’t actually feel anticlimactic because there hadn’t been a high to come down from. It just… was.

In other news, I attempted to go to a bereaved parents’ support group Thursday night… “attempted” meaning that I actually went to the correct place at the correct time, but because of the bad weather, I was the only person there. Which meant that I got an hour to myself with the grief counselor, and when I couldn’t stand it anymore and had to go do something meaningless and shallow I went to the Clinique counter at the mall to buy more foundation and then went home and watched Prime Suspect.

I finished knitting my felted handbag this weekend. Now to felt it, and then block it, and see what I end up with. I actually don’t care how the damned thing turns out, it’s just good to have something time-consuming and repetitive to do that requires little brain power. Now that I’ve finished it, I desperately need to start something new. If I sit still, I start thinking, and that’s bad.

2007-02-08T06:20:00.000-08:00

Picking blueberries, 1979

2007-02-02T06:29:00.000-08:00

Torpy Park, Minocqua, October (yes, October) 1980.
Cole's skates are double-bladed toddler skates... it's sort of the ice skate version of training wheels. Except they made it so easy for her to stand up, that she would actually walk in them they way she would in normal shoes... on ice. (clomp, clomp, clomp) Mom got mad at me for laughing about it. She never understood that I was laughing because I thought it was so cute.

2007-01-30T21:43:00.000-08:00

Photo of the Day: Nicole at three and a half, hugging a goat. Whether the goat is trying to get away or eat her windbreaker is anyone's guess.

2007-01-29T23:08:00.000-08:00

Photo of the Day I think I'll run a random daily sample of the old slides I'm scanning.
I don't feel much like writing, and this project is occupying most of my free time.
Today's pick is from November 1975. Me, Aunt Jo, Uncle Googie, and what I'm guessing is either a lynx or a bobcat, at their zoo, the Warbonnet, back home in Hazelhurst.
I chose this one for two reasons: the composition, and the look on Googie's face.

2007-01-29T06:42:00.000-08:00

I got a slide scanner last week. Which means I can finally scan all of these damned boxes of photos from 1974-1983 to digital files so I can actually look at them without borrowing a projector. Thanks, Steve!

2007-01-25T08:10:00.000-08:00

Mornings have been particularly difficult, but yesterday was the worst.
On Tuesday, our pastor sent out an email announcement that a couple in our church had their third child, a boy, earlier that day. This just after my friend Christine had finally told us on Sunday that she and her husband are expecting twins in July.
Brandon stays at the dojo Tuesday nights, so after work I went to Nicole's apartment, and after leaving Nicole around ten I went home to a very empty house. There was mail for Aidan in the mailbox... a trial issue of a magazine for toddlers about baby animals. Then I discovered that the vigil candle we've been keeping lit since Aidan died had blown out. I lit a new candle, put it on the shelf in the nursery, tried to go to sleep, couldn't. Grabbed a beer and a book I'd already read twice and crawled back into bed, hoping that the combination of the alcohol and the tedium would put me to sleep. Which it finally did, around a quarter after two.
And, for the not quite four hours that I slept, I dreamed of Aidan almost constantly.
He was in the house, running around on chubby feet, grinning at me, demanding attention, needing a change of pants, wanting a snack, wanting to play ball.
I knew he was dead. I said as much to him in the dream. He just grinned and kept playing. In the dream, when Brandon got home, Aidan disappeared, and I was going around the house looking for him, thinking he was hiding somewhere. Brandon asked me what I was doing, and I tried to explain.
"Lisa, Aidan's dead, you can't do this to yourself," he said. I tried to tell him that, yes, okay, I knew he was dead, but he had been here all day regardless and we'd been having a great time. Brandon didn't believe me.
I woke up around six feeling like hell.
I didn't know what else to do, so I made myself some tea, opened the door to the nursery, and started emptying out Aidan's dresser, sorting clothes and socks and quilts and folding them into storage totes, larger sizes on the bottom, smaller sizes on top. I got three totes packed and labeled and had started on a fourth before I finally broke down.
I called my boss, who called my best friend, who helped me take Aidan's stroller and crib linens to the Salvation Army and then took me to breakfast. I think we finally got to work around 12:30.

2006-07-25T18:44:00.000-07:00

Okay, here's my favorite photo *this* week...

It's probably an axiom of parenting that, the first time you take your child to a party wearing his brand-new white overalls, he will of course fall down, cut his lip on his teeth, and bleed all over himself. Especially when you didn't pack a change of clothing in the diaper bag.
Aidan got over it a lot sooner than I did, a little peroxide got the bloodstains out, and all was well.
Today he has two new teeth - the top front two.
The other big thing that happened this weekend was Aidan's first trip to the lake.
It was decidedly colder that Grandma Heidi's pool, but after he got over the shock, it was lovely. LOTS of splashing, lots of flirting with cute girls who made goo goo eyes at him, and further proof that he is indeed the center of the universe.
Obviously.

2006-07-25T06:33:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, this was last night's mus'-go...
Italian Sausage Risotto

scant 2c arborio rice
1 glass dry white wine
1 quart chicken stock
1 onion
1 red pepper
2 large handfuls crimini mushrooms, coarsely chopped
1# uncooked italian sausage (I use basil-garlic pork)
1 large handful sheep's milk parmesan, grated
to taste: fennel seed, fresh basil, salt, pepper
olive oil

Chop the onion and pepper and begin to saute in olive oil; strip the sausage out of the casings and crumble into the pan with a little fennel seed. When cooked, set aside. Add more oil to the pan and saute the rice until it becomes translucent around the edges; add the wine and cook until absorbed. Add the stock about a cup or so at a time until absorbed. Add the mushrooms with the second round of stock, the sausage and vegetables with the third, and the cheese with the last of the stock. Add fresh basil and a little salt.

2006-07-17T11:59:00.000-07:00

Here’s some friendly advice for business meetings:
1) When going in to a business to pitch your service, be prompt. Fifteen minutes late for a meeting with the executive director and three department heads is pretty doggone rude.
2) Do your homework. Even ten minutes of research on the folks you’re about to go in to pitch to will save you a whole bunch of embarrassment. It’s called “know the client”, and there’s really no substitute. Making more than five pungently ignorant statements in the space of ten minutes because you didn’t even spend *two* minutes on the introductory page of the website listed on the bottom of the business card you took a month ago, well…
3) Similarly, if your entire service is marketed toward a particular industry or demographic (in this case, long-term care for the elderly), do sufficient research so you can speak in something other than platitudes.
4) If the service you’re pitching is tech-related, and your presentation is tech-based, then for goodness sake, please make sure that your own tech skills are sufficient to run your presentation properly. If one of the folks you are pitching to has to help you turn up the volume on your laptop—and then, at maximum volume, the sound is barely above a mouse’s whisper—well, that’s not good.
5) No matter how new you are at your game, no matter how desperate you are to make the sale, don’t let it show. Or if you can’t help it showing, then acknowledge it gracefully and don’t let it be the very large smelly elephant in the room.
6) When the presentation is finally over, and the head honcho’s secretary is escorting you back to the lobby, whatever you do, don’t ask in a pathetic wheedle how she thought the presentation went and what she thinks of you. Trust me, you really don’t want to know.

2006-07-11T07:36:00.000-07:00

Ultimate Aztec Ice Cream
Since Brandon is allergic to anything that comes out of a cow except beef, and soy ice cream tastes like playdough and rice milk ice cream tastes like [random expletive], and the only goat milk ice cream I've been able to find is $7.50 A PINT, I've had no choice but to perfect the art of homemade goat milk ice cream.
Don't make a face, this is good.
If you've got an ice cream freezer, try it.
You can even substitute cow milk if you must.
1 can (12 oz) evaporated goat milk
(Safeway has it, so it's not exactly rare)
12 oz fresh whole goat milk
(the fresher the better to avoid that I-just-licked-a-goat taste)
pinch salt
3/4 c brown sugar (I use organic molasses sugar, which is killer)
2 large eggs
1/4 c Lake Champlain Chocolates Aztec Chocolate Powder
(OR, if a trip to Burlington Vermont is not in your immediate future, use 1/4 c dutch cocoa powder mixed with 1 tsp cinnamon and 1 healthy pinch cayenne pepper)
Mix milk, salt, and chocolate on stove until just beginning to boil. Remove from heat. Whisk eggs and sugar. Temper the eggs and sugar with some of the milk, pour the tempered mixture back into the saucepan, cook over low-medium heat just a couple minutes more, cover, and chill thoroughly until cool and thickened.
Pour into ice cream freezer and process about 45 minutes.
Dust top with cinnamon sugar to serve.
Makes one quart.

2006-07-09T07:58:00.000-07:00

Introspection
I took this series when we were in Vermont last month.
The last one is my new favorite shot of Aidan.

2006-07-06T08:09:00.001-07:00

Like Film Noir?
Dig Independent Film?
Always wanted to go to Cannes or Sundance, but just couldn't afford it?
Gonna be anywhere near Los Angeles on the 25th?
Go see
Sixes and the One-Eyed King
at the DancesWithFilms ("No Stars, No Politics, No Sh*t") independent film festival.
Tuesday, July 25th, 9:30 p.m.

Nicole is in it.

USA, 2006, Digital, 100 min.
WORLD Premiere
Dir: Ray Nomoto Robison • Writers: Ray Nomoto Robison, Patricia Snyder • Prods: Rebecca Geear, Ray Nomoto Robison
Cast: Nicole Strykowski, Scott Ford, Grace Thorsen, Tamara Barrus, Scott McEnroe, Gabe Recos, Bob Armstrong, Juan Salles, Alexia Stingley, Tom Daniella, Chance Larsen, Orion Bradshaw

This modern day tragedy follows six suicidal contestants as they participate in a reality internet service which allows subscribers to wager on the outcome of a series of Russian Roulette style games. One by one the contestants are eliminated in their effort to win the game and become an instant multi-millionaire. The web service is strictly for international high rollers who love the thrill of life and death competition. But trouble begins when a subscriber recognizes one of the contestants as his missing cousin.

Fairfax 3
7907 Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90048
(323) 655-4010

to buy a ticket online, click here

2006-06-30T06:43:00.000-07:00

Mother of the Year
[telephone ringing]
“Pediatrics.”
“Hello, is this the Advice Nurse?”
“Yes it is. How can I help you?”
“My baby just ate dog food. Should I be worried?”
“How big is your baby?”
“Eighteen pounds.”
“How much of it did he eat?”
“I’m not sure… a few pieces, I guess.”
“How long ago?”
“About five minutes.”
“Is he acting upset or behaving in any way that is unusual?”
“Well, he was pretty angry at me for taking the rest of it away from him.”
“He’s not turning blue or choking?”
“No, he seems fine.”
“I need to put you on hold while I call Poison Control. What kind of dog food was it?”
“Uh, lamb and rice?”
“No, ma’am, I need to know what brand.”
“Oh… um… Premium Edge Senior Dog Formula.”
“Hold on, please.”
[one minute later]
“Ma’am? They said it’s not a big deal, just a little extra protein.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“Anything else I can help you with?”
“Nope, that’s all, bye.”

2006-06-10T09:33:00.000-07:00

It’s been anything but a quiet couple of weeks in Lake Woebegon.

Things at work should be settling down to the normal level of chaos, as opposed to the elevated level of chaos I’ve been swimming in for the past three months. Budget season is over, the licensing survey is over, and after everyone gets over themselves things should be just ducky.

Just before I left for Vermont, I learned that a friend I love very much but haven’t seen in a long time has been very ill with cancer which may or may not have metastasized, they don’t know yet. They could have caught it much earlier (literally years earlier) if he’d bothered to go to the doctor, but he didn’t have health insurance. I’m still vacillating between denial and anger, I haven’t *even* got as far as bargaining yet.

Mysterious lumps need to be checked out, people. If you catch yourself saying, “It’s probably nothing”, IT’S NOT.

Aidan is crawling, pulling himself up on the furniture, has two teeth, and knows one word (mama) that has a variable number of syllables (between two and five, depending on his mood). He has learned how to give very strange, sloppy kisses: he’ll put his whole mouth over your nose—not biting, just staying there for a second—then lean back and look at you and give you a big cockeyed grin. He loves swings, dogs, petting zoos, finger puppets, bananas, hackey sacks, remote controls, and strawberry ice cream. He deals really well with plane rides and car trips but really poorly with jet lag.

My sister finally found a place to live after six months in the Bay Area, is moving in this weekend, and started rehearsal on Romeo and Juliet this morning. She's playing Tybalt.

Our trip to Vermont was awesome, our nephew is beautiful and amazing and all the other adjectives that new babies are supposed to be. And while we were there we celebrated our anniversary, which was either number seven or number ten depending on how you want to count it. Which is both cool and weird.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

2006-05-19T14:32:00.000-07:00

Brandon has been off in D.C. this week doing a gig for Conference Recording and Aidan and I are on our own, so he came to work with me today. I’m getting *so* much done.

2006-05-18T07:27:00.000-07:00

Meghan and Isaiah have *finally* posted photos (they made us wait FOUR DAYS!!!) of their son (our nephew!!!) Valliant on their family blog. Go look! He's beautiful!

2006-05-10T21:22:00.000-07:00

Paging Doctor Ramos...
It's official! As of earlier today, my college roommate Rufel (twelve years ago, but what the hell, it feels like yesterday), is Dr. Ramos. And will graduate on Sunday. Cue the champagne corks!!!
Swing on over to The Lizard Queen and congratulate her!

2006-04-17T07:27:00.000-07:00

2006-04-14T07:58:00.000-07:00

Spring Cleaning on Good Friday
The boss was taking a much-needed and well-earned day off today to go do whatever it is that nuns do on Good Friday, so even though I was already taking *next* Friday and Monday off to go north, she gave me today off as well.
Which is really nice, because Iris was already coming over in the afternoon to watch Aidan so Brandon could go work on his diss, which means that I will actually be able to finish my Heraklean task of cleaning out the Augean Closets and Basement. Then there's vacuuming, dusting, ironing, doing all the prep cooking for Easter dinner (Greek again, because it's easy), and if I still have time, taking some fabric scraps and making some soft blocks for Aidan to play with.
Which means that *tomorrow* I will wake up to a clean, quasi-organized house with nothing to do but *relax*.
And work on the mer-boy ragdoll I've been making for my nephew, who is due in four more weeks. (I've been embroidering the face this week, and it's actually NOT CROOKED!)

2006-04-13T06:15:00.000-07:00

“I knew I’d been living in Berkeley too long when I saw a sign: FREE FIREWOOD and wondered, Who is Firewood and what did he do?”

Today’s offering is a poem for writers. I found this a few years ago in my favorite poetry anthology, Czeslaw Milosz’s A Book of Luminous Things. I’m not sure, but I think I’m posting this one for my mother-in-law.
_______________________________________

My sister does not write poems
and it’s unliely she’ll suddenly start writing poems.
She takes after her mother, who did not write poems,
and after her father, who also did not write poems.
Under my sister’s roof I feel safe:
nothing would move my sister’s husband to write poems.
And though it sounds like a poem by Adam Macedonski,
none of my relatives is engaged in the writing of poems.

In my sister’s desk there are no old peoms
nor any new ones in her handbag.
And when my sister invites me to dinner,
I know she has no intention of reading me poems.
She makes superb soups without half trying,
and her coffee does not spill on manuscripts.

In many families no one writes poems,
but when they do, it’s seldom just one person.
Sometimes peotry flows in cascades of generations,
which sets up fearsome eddies in family relations.

My sister cultivates a decent spoken prose,
her entire literary output is on vacation postcards
that promise the same thing every year:
that when she returns,
she’ll tell us, everything,
everything,
everything.

- Wislawa Szymborska

2006-04-11T07:47:00.000-07:00

I'm back.
I may eventually catch up with all I have been meaning to say or have inadvertently left unsaid; let me 'splain. No, there is too much, let me sum up.
I've been busy.
And stressed.
And wandering around in my head without much sense of anything but schedules and duties.
Now that I'm beginning to take time to *read* again (I've finished two books since Christmas, when my usual number is about five a week), I think I will start by posting some of the things I've been reading lately that I've enjoyed.
Here's the first.
---------------------------------------------------------

They call all experience of the senses mystic, when the experience is considered.
So an apple becomes mystic when I taste in it
the summer and the snows, the wild welter of earth
and the insistence of the sun.

All of which things I can surely taste in a good apple.
Though some apples taste preponderantly of water, wet and sour
and some of too much sun, brackish sweet
like lagoon-water, that has been too much sunned.

If I say I taste these things in an apple, I am called mystic, which means a liar.
The only way to eat an apple is to hog it down like a pig
and taste nothing
that is real.

But if I eat an apple, I like to eat it with all my senses awake.
Hogging it down like a pig I call the feeding of corpses.

- D. H. Lawrence

2006-02-13T07:17:00.000-08:00

Why I love digital cameras...

... a perfectly good photo ruined by the long string of drool.
If you look closely, you can even see the shadow of it on his neck.

2006-02-07T10:49:00.000-08:00

We had Aidan's Four (and a half) month check-up with his pediatrician yesterday.
The little moose is up to fifteen pounds and has grown 4 and a half inches since birth (almost all of it in his legs, I swear).
The good news is, we got the official okay to start him on solids (which makes me soooo very happy). So on the way home from work last night I bought some rice cereal, some oatmeal cereal, and some organic banana, carrots, and peaches. We managed to get most of the rice cereal and a little banana down him without getting it all over him, me, or the rest of the kitchen, which is good. And after Brandon got him to sleep around ten o'clock, he slept until four without waking up. Which is *very* good.

2006-02-03T12:00:00.000-08:00

Hamlet Never Took The BART To Oakland
My sister wrote this and sent it to me this morning, and (after cleaning up the coffee I spit all over my keyboard) I felt I had to share it.

HAMLET: Who would these fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life...
NICOLE: You mean, working in Oakland.
HAMLET: But that the dread of something after death...
NICOLE: Worse than Oakland?
HAMLET: The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveller returns...
NICOLE: Sounds like Oakland.
HAMLET: Puzzles the will...
NICOLE: I know. What's so great about smoking crack?
HAMLET: And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of?
NICOLE: Shut up bitch, you're from Denmark. Welcome to Oaktown.

2006-02-01T07:59:00.000-08:00

In homage to Kate Chopin...
When I was young and callow, I read a story called A Pair of Silk Stockings in my high school English anthology. I thought it was, quite simply, pathetic. In college, I read it again and found it rather sad. A week ago, driving to work an hour late and crying because nothing in my closet was clean or fit properly (it had been two weeks since I'd done any laundry and there weren't that many options to begin with), and I was tired and stressed and not looking forward to what my boss would say when I walked in late yet *again*, and I had a fantasy of driving past my exit on the freeway, going to a day spa, getting the works, going out to lunch, and then going shopping for some new clothes, and worrying later about how much credit card debt I was racking up.
When I got to work, I looked up that story on Wikisource, and this time I found it liberating.
(Which is, in itself, rather pathetic.)
I had recently discovered a way to save us $2,000 a year by paying privately for Brandon and Aidan's health insurance at our HMO instead of continuing to keep them on our group plan at work, and so I sent an email to Brandon and to Marilyn, our friend and financial advisor, suggesting that discovering such a savings might be worth a small commission.
So last night, after work, I picked up Aidan, and we made an evening of it.
First we went to the piercing shop and got my left ear re-pierced (it had closed up while I was pregnant and I couldn't wear my favorite jewelry anymore).
Then we went shopping.
I've discovered the virtues of shopping with babies: the sales clerks are nicer to you, you get the biggest dressing rooms to try things on, and you can balance your finds over the hood of the stroller. Everything was on sale, so I got three blouses, three pairs of slacks, and a skirt for $150. Penney's rocks. And then I saw a cute denim jacket in Aidan's size on a clearance rack, marked down 75%, so we got that too.
Oh yeah... and absolutely nothing I bought was black!

2006-01-29T20:58:00.000-08:00

Parenting, Week Eighteen:
A Moose in a Dress
This was a good weekend. Mom and Greg stopped in the Bay for Aidan's christening on their way home from their travels, so that was very cool.
And while her grandson looked a bit like a moose in a dress...

(we're not sure exactly how much he weighs now, but he's built like a linebacker), he was magically still able to fit into Brandon's christening gown for the big day.

Meanwhile Aidan and his Grandma Heidi got to play and giggle at each other.

Weekly bath time is getting more fun now that he's big enough for his bath seat, and learning how to splash and play with his bath toys...

...and we also tried out the backpack carrier for the first time this weekend. So far, he seems to dig it.

And just because it's too cute to pass up, a gratuitous shot of a little boy with his trousers on his head.

2006-01-23T11:10:00.000-08:00

Today is Aidan’s four-month birthday.
We celebrated this weekend by being extraordinarily fussy, staying up all night screeching, and throwing up in church… well, that’s how Aidan celebrated. His exhausted parents watched Seinfeld reruns and ate coffee cake. (Odd thing, I searched for years for the perfect coffee cake recipe without success until I happened upon an old Jewish cookbook the size of a paperback novel. The best coffee cake I’ve ever tried. This should have been obvious.)
Oh, and our diaper service doesn’t put a weight limit on its diaper sizes on their website, so we’ve been at a loss as to when is the appropriate time to switch from Newborn to Regular diapers. Turns out it was about three pounds ago, which is why the diapers aren’t fitting properly and are leaking in weird places all of a sudden. A few nights ago, Aidan started trying to learn how to crawl while he was face-down on the changing table and I was attempting to clean off his back… unfortunately, the place he was trying to put his knees and toes was not someplace I was wanting said knees and toes to be, so instead of celebrating the milestone I was struggling with a squirming sumo baby and crying because now there was poop *everywhere*. Aidan, of course, thought this was all outrageously funny.
Another thing that was outrageously funny (ha freakin’ ha) happened this morning when Brandon was awakened by a phone call from the Head and Neck Surgery Scheduler at our HMO, who informed him that she was trying to schedule me for an appointment because I’d “suffered vision and hearing loss as a result of a fall”. So he frantically tried to call me at work, and I was away from my desk getting coffee, so he called the receptionist who reassured him that I was fine and she’d just seen me walking past. Apparently the Audiology department shares a scheduling secretary with the Head and Neck Surgery department, and she was supposed to schedule me for a hearing test and got her papers mixed up or something.
Aidan’s Christening is this Sunday. Luckily, the moose can still fit into the family christening gown (just barely). I’ve got it hanging up to shake the wrinkles out because I’m afraid of putting an iron to it. And I’ve managed to put together a menu for the brunch afterwards that should satisfy both the carnivores (jambalaya with prawns and andouille sausage) and the vegetarians (asparagus and goat cheese quiche with whole-wheat crust). Plus there will be coffee, mimosas, fruit salad, and coffee cake. I have to make everything on Saturday because I’ll have no time Sunday morning. Now I just have to find something in my closet that (a) fits properly and (b) isn’t black or denim.

2006-01-20T09:14:00.000-08:00

So I saw The Amazing Dixie, my personal miracle worker, at 7:30 this morning.I gave her three instructions:
1) keep the overall length,
2) don’t do anything too drastic,
3) make me look *good* again.
Other than that, I told her, you can knock yourself out.
(After six years, I trust this woman completely.)
So what I ended up with is seriously “Charlie’s Angels”.
You can actually see my face… no more Veronica Lake.
Oh, yeah… and I have bangs now.
Down...

And up...

2006-01-19T20:30:00.000-08:00

Baby's First Harley...

It's a motorcycle. It's a rocking horse. It's very cool. Aidan's Grandpa Joe knocked one out of the park.
Oh, yeah, and there's a detachable sidecar, too.

2006-01-16T09:46:00.000-08:00

Okay, it's opinion time.
One of the side effects of having had a baby is that the post-pregnancy hormone fluctuations do nasty things to your hair, such as make it dry and brittle and fall out by the handful. When you already have very dry hair to begin with (as is the case with most curlytops), this is *bad*. You spend most days in a ponytail because you literally can't make it look like anything good. I'm sick to death of scrunchies.
You get people looking at you sympathetically and saying "you look so tired", which is really just a polite way of saying "you look like hell".
So I'm thinking of taking semi-drastic measures.
No, I'm not going to cut off my mane entirely, because short hair on large-boned, curvaceous women looks horribly imbalanced. And I want it to be fairly easy to go back to manesville when my body rebounds from everything it's gone through.
So I'm making an appointment with Dixie for this week, if I can get it (she's a busy woman), and I'm going to do one of two things:
1) Keep the current style and just get a 2-3 inch trim all around to get rid of the dead stuff. Leaves you with a slightly healthier looking version of what you're already dealing with... not great, but it will get you through.
2) Cutting off about a third of my length all the way around... NOT, let me make this perfectly clear, NOT one of those triangular blunt cuts. I've had one of those before and it made me look like a misguided poodle. I'm talking about a medium-length layered look, so instead of the overall outline being triangular, it's more heart-shaped or lightbulb-shaped. The bottom of it would still brush my shoulders, and after my hair gets healthy again it would be pretty easy to grow back out to its full length.
So, gentle readers, I'm opening it up for votes.
If you read, PLEASE post a response, and not a chicken response, but an actual answer: 1, 2, or makes no difference. You can post anonymously if you don't want to leave your real name.

2006-01-12T10:45:00.000-08:00

There aren't many heartwarming stories about lawyers or judges out there.
This is a really neat article from the Chron about the family of one of our former residents at the facility where I work. I had a great deal of admiration for the old judge... I miss him. So this story really made me smile.