Me Under Construction

Abandon ship

2012-01-02T22:49:00.000-05:00

New year, hopefully new life, and new blog: here. I'll be turning this one off in a week or so. But keeping it around so I can use photos.

Toodles!

Book 15, SRP 5: Dead Reckoning

2011-07-30T20:59:00.000-06:00

I'm really starting to think Charlaine Harris needs to let this series die a respectable death instead of letting them get worse and worse as time passes. The last couple of books have been disjointed with none of the sweet and saucy humor of the earlier books. It's like she tosses together some sort of conflict between the supernaturals, some sex, a gory battle of some sort, and a few scenes at the diner. Meh.

Book 14, SRP 4: Crazy Aunt Purl's Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair

2011-07-28T22:01:00.000-06:00

Funny and sad at the same time. I could relate to Perry's tale of how knitting brought her back from the brink of crazy after her husband left her to go find his creativity (do men really think we believe that shit?). After I lost two close family members within a week of one another last year, I pretty much ate, slept, went to work, and knitted while watching zombie movies (favorite: Norwegian Nazi zombies) for 3 months, and my first forays out of the house for socialization were to the local SnB. Perry does a great job of discussing how she came back to life.

Book 13, SRP 3: Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

2011-07-03T16:26:00.000-06:00

This is actually a re-read for me, but I'm counting it anyway as it's been at least 10 years since I first read it. Described by one reviewer as the book of Revelations as done by Monty Python, Good Omens is incredibly irreverent and not for the extremely zealous. It tells what happens when a confused Satanic nun delivers the anti-Christ to the wrong family, featuring a cast of characters that includes a gang of English schoolchildren, an angel and devil who really aren't into the whole Apocalypse thing, the Four Bikers of the Apocalypse, a hellhound named Dog, a witch and the book of prophecies pass down from an ancestor burned at the stake centuries ago, and a Witchfinder General who you can just hear screaming "Get off my lawn," if he had a lawn.

This go-round it wasn't the humor that caught my notice so much as the sweet philosophy of it. The anti-Christ just wants to clean up the world so there are whales and trees and places to play. The collision course to the Apocalypse almost happens not because anyone really wants war but because that's what someone told them had to happen. It's good stuff all around.

Book 12, SRP 2L Deadline, by Mira Grant

2011-06-20T18:19:00.000-06:00

Gonna be vague here so as not to spoil: Like this book just as much as I did Feed, albeit for different reasons. The first book incorporated political intrigue in such a way that the book wasn't really about zombies at all; the real monsters were those manipulating events to their own ends no matter who stood in their way. In Deadline, the book focuses on Shaun Mason and his grief for sister Georgia (truth be told, I found Shaun rather annoying in Feed. Deadline is more of a psychological study, both in terms of Shaun and company's personal pain and of group behavior -- the culture of fear that has developed and what organizations are willing to do in the interest of the greater good when left unchecked. The only problem will be waiting for the next one to see how it all ends.

Book 11, SRP 1: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

2011-06-20T18:17:00.001-06:00

Not much I can add to the stacks and stacks of reviews about this book: It's a classic of American literature and of fiction representing war and its aftermath. Hard to follow at times because of the disjointed text, but I think it depicts perfectly the way one thing can take your mind to a whole different place and time. If you haven't read it yet, you need to.

Get ready, get set, READ!

2011-05-29T22:13:00.000-06:00

This weekend marks the beginning of another Summer Reading Program, led this year by my friend Muffin the YA Librarian. I'll be posting reviews here through Labor Day weekend. My goal: finish 10 books by the end, to include audiobooks. (Since I'm planning to get my butt back in the gym at work, I will have plenty of time on the elliptical to listen to the exploits of Gypsy Rose Lee and whatever the other audiobook I downloaded from Overdrive was.

Book 10: The Zombie Autopsies

2011-05-29T22:02:00.002-06:00

Written by a Harvard psychiatry professor, this book has a different spin than most in the zombie genre. It's not so much a thriller, with bands of refugees racing through the streets trying to stay alive and find a safe haven, as it is a fictional discourse on science and ethics. Told through the diaries of a neuroanatomist on an isolated research facility in the Indian Ocean, the story focuses on autopsies undertaken to determine just what pathogens are involved in the disease. Schlozman adds a dose of reality by making one of the underlying mechanisms a prion-based disease. (You want some real horror, study up on those.) Along the way we get a picture of the biological changes that one might see in zombies. But in the end, the book is about humanity: what makes us human, ethics of experimentation on humans or, in this case, humanoids (the autopsies are all performed while the subject is still "animated"), and the horrible things humans do to one another and the planet (though we never find out exactly who create the virus and set it loose, it is obvious early on to the researchers that this was a man-made pathogen). A fun book for those who like some science with their zombies.

Book 9: Jane, April Lindner

2011-05-05T22:10:00.000-05:00

As Jane Eyre is probably my favorite book of all time, I was more than a little twitchy when I heard that an modernized version based on the novel had published. For the most part, my concerns were not realized. Lindner does a fairly good job at updating the storyline while not losing the essence of it. Miss Eyre becomes Jane Moore, who must drop out of college after her parents die and leave all their assets to her abusive, self-involved siblings. Her Rochester is Nico Rathburn, rock star with a wild past trying to make a comeback. Bianca is now a photographer documenting rehearsals for the new tour. The story transitions well to the modern era IMHO, although today's Jane seems more lacking in self-esteem than being honest about her flaws. Also, in the modern era the age difference between 19-year-old Jane and 40ish Nico seems a bit creepy, though it never bothered me in the original. But altogether it's a worthwhile read for fans of the original, and those not predisposed to 19th century Gothics would likely find it accessible.

Book 8: The Flooded Earth

2011-05-02T22:34:00.000-05:00

If you've been looking at news reports about the lack of ice in the Arctic, the melting of glaciers across the planet, and the rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and getting jittery about the earth's prospects, you're not alone. In this book, a sort of follow-up to Under a Green Sky, Ward makes a good case for the the idea that rising CO2, higher temperatures, and melting glaciers and ice caps are leading to rising sea levels the world over. He also demonstrates that very limited sea level rise can cause cataclysmic problems. For instance, a rise of just 1.5 meters will wipe out much of Louisiana south of I-10, a rise that we may very well see by 2100 CE. The problem is also one of politics and power: what is India likely to do when 10 million starving Bangladeshis, mainly Muslims, being flooded out of their homes show up at the border? Though he does present some positive scenarios, such as the use of engineering to keep some areas safe, Ward notes that the political, economic, and societal will to force the hard behavioral changes necessary to stop the problem in its place simply isn't there and that in many regards, humanity has passed the turning point.

*cue BG humming "Past the Point of No Return" as she paddles an air mattress covered with dogs down St. Charles Avenue*

Tim Minchin's Storm the Animated Movie

2011-04-23T21:39:00.000-05:00

Book 7: Dead City

2011-04-02T20:15:00.002-05:00

Fast-paced mass market paperback of the zombie genre, this first in a series was almost one long chase scene as the protagonist San Antonio policeman goes from a fairly routine call to trying to reunite with his wife and child. In between, he has to survive the zombies, a gangbanger, his going-batshit former partner, and the chaos of a dying city. My favorite part of the book was the backstory: the virus that left its victims as cannibals neither dead nor alive was birthed out of the industrial muck of a hurricane-wrecked Gulf Coast, brought to San Antonio by hurricane refugees. The snippet from the next book in the series shows that it might be a tighter, more complex book.

Welcome to pollen season

2011-03-29T21:15:00.000-05:00

My least favorite 3/4 of the year, when forgetting my allergy meds means a coughing fit every time I'm outside for any length of time. After 3 years, my body still considers the plant life here an enemy.

Spring has also brought a slew of visitors. Mom and C visited 2 weeks ago. Both were in desperate need of a rest. We had a few excursions together, to Chickie Wah Wah to hear Jon Cleary, to the zoo so that they could take a picture of an alligator (I adopted one for the niecelet for Christmas). We also visited the sculpture garden at City Park. But Mom also spent a couple days just reading, and Chris watched basketball here and there. I was excited to show them around my new home and to spend time with them, especially considering that we're it now. I also did a fair amount of knitting.

The week after, my pal B came in for the NCAA Sweet Sixteen and Elite 8. We had a great time exploring some new restaurants together and with Kevin; additionally, we saw some great basketball.

In between there, I got my garden planted and my seeds started: a couple varieties of tomatoes, 3 of beans, 2 of peppers. Basil is growing gangbusters already, and the mint has exploded. It's not enough to survive an apocalypse, but it'll save us a bit at the farmer's market and may provide some summer goodness over the winter. I'm determined for this crop to survive.

Book 6: Flow

2011-03-21T22:32:00.000-05:00

found this book just so-so. A large part of my problem with it was that I thought it had the potential to be a much better book. The authors took a tone that was neither scholarly nor personal commentary; the mix of the two made it read like historical fiction. Often, I wasn't sure which statements were backed up empirically and which were opinion. And when the opinion was presented, it was typically in the tone of an anti-vaxer screeching about how Big Pharma wants to poison her baybees. (Oooh, femcare is evil. You're misguided and not in touch with your natural feminine gift if you use contraception to not have monthly bleeds. And so on.) Structurally speaking, the manner in which information was broken down sometimes made no sense to me. Also, nonfiction works without indexes just piss me off. However, the subject matter was of interest, the advertising images through the years were fascinating and informative, and the topic one that lends itself to a less scholarly treatment.

Book 5: The Reapers Are the Angels

2011-03-20T19:21:00.000-05:00

This was probably the most beautiful book I've read in a while. Somewhat unusual, because the backdrop is a zombie-ravaged southern United States and the narrator is a 15-year-old girl who is on her own and running from her erstwhile murderer. But the language, the imagery, the story: it all takes your breath away. If you read one zombie book this year, make this one it. (Then go out and get Mira Grant's "Feed" so you'll be prepared for the release of the second book in May.)

Book 4: Life on AIr

2011-03-11T23:09:00.000-05:00

For fans of the natural history documentary series of Sir David Attenborough, this book is a must. Not only do you get a in-depth look at his 60-plus years of television making and travel around the globe, but also insight into the history of the BBC and the post-WWII world. It all makes for fascinating reading (or listening, as I had the updated audio-book version).

Book 3: The 900 Days

2011-03-10T23:20:00.000-05:00

By Harrison Salisbury.

Finally finished this sucker after more than a year of sporadic reading.

Review:

This book, first published in the 1960s, is probably at the top of the canon regarding Leningrad. Salisbury was among the first American journalists in Russia after the war, and much of the book is built on personal interviews with the key players in the siege (at least the ones Stalin hadn't executed by that point). His source material also includes official documentation of the events and biographies of those involved, as well as literary works. Despite being almost 600 pages in length, it's a fairly easy read, with more of a narrative rather than scholarly tone. It's balanced between military information and the accounts of individuals living through the siege, the famous as well as everyday people. The details are horrific, but Salisbury doesn't pull any punches. Because the book was written at a time when the Soviets were still very closed about, well, everything, I have to wonder what a rewrite of the book would look like after the secret police archives were opened up and Leningraders could speak freely.

Latest knitting project

2011-03-06T23:02:00.000-05:00

Finished up the other winter hat: got to wear it a couple times before the weather warmed up. Although at the rate the weather is going, I may have more opportunities. Last week we had a couple of days that were about 80, but today it didn't get past 55.

I'm starting my first pair of toe-up socks using the book Auntie R bought me for Xmas -- she says she's never going back to ankle down socks. I want to try to get to the gusset by the time I go to see her next weekend, in case I have questions.

Oh, and I've decided to learn to crochet. I've made a tea towel sort of trivety thing. Will take photos once I've woven in the ends.

Catching up

2011-02-15T23:56:00.000-05:00

Not much of import has been happening over the past month or so. Work is busy but good. I think this spring may be more manageable than those in years past. I did something toward exploring local library career options: applying to get on the sub list or work PT at the library system in the next parish over. I figure this way I'll have a sense for whether I'd want to work there if my husband had enough of an income to subsidize my career choices. It might happen, assuming the world doesn't end in 2012.

We're hanging on as best we can. It's a really busy semester for K, plus clinic, plus thinking about bar prep. On the bright side, I've convinced him to at least go through the law school commencement. We're skipping all the associated masses and the main ceremony. It's mid-February and K's student loan disbursement is still in process (of course, the school paid itself 6 weeks ago; they're just taking their time releasing the rest to us).

Mardi Gras season starts in earnest on Saturday with Krewe du Vieux, which is the most raunchy, locally oriented parade. (All of the themes are topical in nature, applying to local politics and personalities.) I will probably go to about the same number of parades as last year and will be working Lundi Gras. After burning through my vacation when dad died, I need to build some back, as Mom and Chris are coming to visit in mid-March, the week after MG, and a week or 2 later is the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 here in town, with buddy B coming down for the games. My mother has actually agreed to get on a plane, her first commercial flight ever and her first flight since I was a blastocyst. She was supposed to fly down here 2 years ago but broke her knee 3 weeks before and couldn't come. We're hoping for no injuries this year.

Book 2: Bright Sided

2011-02-07T22:46:00.000-05:00

[Note: This review will also be appearing on the website for the New Orleans Secular Humanist Association. Just so you don't think I stole it. (-:]

Bright Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America

Barbara Ehrenreich

New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009, 235 pp.

“Optimism is the opium of the people.” Milan Kundera, “The Joke”

These words, written in an atmosphere of repression in Kundera’s 1960s Yugoslavia, illustrate the central point of Barbara Ehrenreich’s 2010 book Bright Sided: that positivity can be just as, if not more dangerous, than negativity. Specifically, she takes the reader on a journey into the positive thinking movement, from its beginnings in the 19^th century in response to the dour “you’re evil and gonna burn” stance of Calvinism to its role in U.S. political and economic affairs.

Ehrenreich’s inspiration for the book was her experience as a breast cancer patient, in which informational literature, support groups, and particularly other patients put forth the view that not only was being positive a key to regaining one’s health, but also the slightest negativity (say, being angry that you have cancer) would actually help the disease spread and, if you haven’t always been sunshine and roses, may have been its original cause.

The bible of the modern positive-thinking police is the 2006 book The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne. It and its imitators focus on “the law of attraction,” ie, the idea that anything can be yours by focusing your mind and visualizing it. For instance, one might “manifest wealth” by imagining that Mercedes in the driveway consistently and by believing wholeheartedly that you can make it happen, no matter whether one has an income that would support its payments. Essentially, the whole concept comes down to magical thinking: ignoring facts and shielding oneself from reality. But money and good aren’t the only areas where the law of attraction and its positive thinking brethren can be found: Ehrenreich discusses the phenomenon in a variety of areas: prosperity gospel, motivational speakers, medicine and the power of attitude, economics, etc.

Ehrenreich presents a much darker side to this magical thinking, which is among the areas where the book’s subtitle—How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America—really comes into play. In creating a worldview in which positive and good are interchangeable, the opposite becomes true as well: if something bad befalls you, your own negativity must have attracted it. For example, in reference to the victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami, Byrne noted that such disasters can only happen to those “on the same frequency as the event.” Poverty, therefore, is a willful failure to embrace abundance, and sickness cannot happen in those with harmonious thoughts.

Perhaps nowhere has this magical thinking been more harmful and disastrous than in the economic realm. Ehrenreich, who has written extensively on the growing gap between rich and poor and the destruction of the middle class, discusses a corporate world in which motivational speakers are brought into companies, particularly after layoffs, to “discipline a demoralized workforce” and remind the remaining employees to fake those smiles or face the same fate. (Working in an organization that recently enacted a “no venting” rule while simultaneously sponsoring a workshop on how to think positive thoughts, this one hit close to home.)

Also, she identifies the role that positive thinking played in the real estate crash of the late 2000s. Parties that included homebuyers who overextended themselves (often based on the encouragement of prosperity preachers who told them God would provide the payments for that McMansion), regulatory agencies that refused to hear any negative word about the real estate market possibly falling, and Wall Street barons who fired analysts who gave bad news even if based in reality all combined to create a financial perfect storm, based in large part on the idea that to discuss the very real possibility of a real estate downturn would in and of itself make it happen.

In her conclusion, Ehrenreich stresses that we all need not be pessimistic curmudgeons. Pointing out that skepticism has led to most human advances over the eons, she notes that the key is to apply critical thinking skills, to base our actions in reason and common sense, and to be authentic.

Knitting pictures

2011-01-24T23:03:00.000-05:00

So, I've been really bad about posting knitting pics, mainly because it's such a PITA to take the photo, then upload them onto my computer. But, now that I can use the iPhone for quick pics like these, I'm hoping to get better about it.

Anyway, here's a little bit of what I've been working on lately. The green socks use a pattern from Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles and use a KnitPicks sock yarn. The pink is from another of their yarns and is leftover from pink stripey knee socks I made for the niecelet (she liked them, but by the time she got them, they no longer went to her knees -- damn long-legged girl). The green socks turned out nicely, except they're just a bit too long (I always wait too long to start my toes).

Baby blanket here is the Big Bad Baby Blanket from the first Stitch N Bitch book, using a washable KnitPicks yarn that is a cotton blend. Turned out a little lopsided, but I don't think the baby will mind. Below are two umbilical cord hats from the same book using the same yarn (I had a couple of skeins left over).

Finally we have a kitty cat hat, from the KnitPicks Northern Critter Cap, Domestic version, kit. I think it's adorable, though I may give it to my mom as a really late Christmas gift (early Valentine's Day present?). It looks just like Cali, except that she has a white chest not orange, so it'll be hard to give it up.

Book 1: To Fetch a Thief, by Spencer Quinn

2011-01-16T21:35:00.000-05:00

(Link to Barnes & Noble book page is in the title)

The third in the Chet & Bernie mystery series, mainly told from the perspective of our canine detective, Chet. Here they investigate the disappearance of a circus elephant but run into much more extensive trouble on both sides of the Southwest border. I give it a thumbs up, but I hope that if there's another book, Quinn chooses a case that doesn't involve animals being harmed: in the last book, it was pampered poodle Princess; here the list is more extensive and exotic. A nice, quick read.

Happy New Year!

2011-01-06T21:56:00.000-05:00

And we here are all hoping that 2011 does not suck as hard as 2010. Truthfully my one goal for the year is that no one die before K takes the Bar in July, but that's not one that any of us have control over. However, I do have some other items I want to do this year:

Work on my German more faithfully
Play my flute and oboe
Read more, watch less TV
Exercise more, and preferably lose enough weight that I weigh what it says on my driver's license
Figure out a way to deal with the stress of the year as it pertains to the spouse (i.e., find a way not to kill him between finishing the spring semester and taking the MPRE, prepping for and taking the Bar, waiting for the Bar results, and dealing with the myriad financial issues that will arise once we don't have his student loans to rely on
Manage the garden better
Deal with the professional situation
Watch all of our Monty Pythons

Instead of keeping a simple list of what I read, I'm going to write about them here for posterity's sake, so that I can remember them and to keep the content current.

Other newsy bits. Christmas was subdued but OK. In hindsight, we probably should have done things differently than years past, as going to MS as usual made it so obvious that there was a huge hole where Gary should have been. But I got a lot of knitting done, and the dogs had a great time. Kev made a wonderful dinner of prime rib, sauteed spinach, Yorkshire pudding, and cauliflower. Dessert was pecan caramel shortbread and a lot of fine wine. (We killed one of the last bottles remaining from my ILs collection.)

Been pondering a job application at a local u that was decimated by Katrina (or rather the levee failure afterward), but decided that I don't want to risk the chance of it losing all its funding (it's a state HBCU) before K is gainfully working. Meanwhile, I'm going to see about volunteering at the public library or getting on the sub lists. Otherwise, looks like I'll be editing for a while.

So, that's the year ahead.

Test post

2011-01-03T15:47:00.001-05:00

Test message from iPhone

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:The salt mines

Almost Christmas

2010-12-16T23:18:00.000-05:00

And I have purchased nary a gift yet. I usually am pretty slow with these things, but this year my heart just hasn't been in it. I think for the niecelet, I'll adopt an animal in the zoo in her name. K, I have no idea. Was thinking about a book, but it'll be a year before he can read it. Same for a cookbook, which we have too many of already. Mom will probably get a sweater, because she tends to be cold. Baby brother is wanting to come down for his spring break, so perhaps I'll get him a gift certificate to the golf course in Audubon. I'm getting myself a set of Science Tarot cards. Maybe some clothing, if the weight loss continues. Grief has at least been helpful to my figure, even if I haven't mustered up the energy for the gym in weeks.

I'm doing fairly well, pretty much trudging through the days at work and going to bed at 10, which is way early for me. (Usually, I'm doing well if I'm in bed by 11, and usually it's midnight.) I did have a minor milestone yesterday: I went to knitting group (joined in October just before the shit hit the fan). This is the first time I've been out to do something sociable on a week night since September, before I interviewed for and didn't get the job at Private University's medical library. I had fun, met some cool new people, and felt human. Whether this keeps up, who knows. Next week is the atheist happy hour--another trip out of the house. Then on Friday a visit to MS for Christmas weekend with Auntie R. I'm sure it will be filled with laughter, tears, booze, and food. And probably a lot of reading and sleep, which is frankly what we all desperately need.

Cafe Abyssinia

2010-12-06T22:04:00.000-05:00

At the encouragement of a friend, I've created a Yelp account to post my restaurant reviews. The one linked to in the title is for an Ethiopian restaurant called Cafe Abyssinia, down on Magazine Street. We ate there on Thanksgiving and loved it: The last time we had anything similar was an Eritrean place in Portland. We've missed injera and lentils and tibs a great deal since leaving DC.

Well, hell

2010-12-06T22:00:00.000-05:00

Just when you think things can't get worse, the Fates show you otherwise. Two days after G's memorial service, my mom called me in the middle of the day at work (always a bad sign) to tell me that my dad had died that morning, presumably of a heart attack while climbing the stairs to a friend's house. He had COPD caused by black lung and was obese, but he hadn't been sick at all. When the fog lifts from my brain, I may write more about the week, our relationship, and how I'm doing. However, right now just watching TV makes me tired, so I'll keep this short. I went home the Saturday after Thanksgiving and came back to NO a week later. Mom's doing relatively well, although after dealing with bureaucracy all week (Dad didn't have a will, necessitating a variety of extra steps for her to handle legal matters), she was commenting that if he weren't dead already she'd probably kill him. Once my mom starts threatening violence, you know she's feeling better. As for me, I went back to work day and was able to be reasonably productive, which was more than I thought I'd be capable of.

One thing that was made apparent by this spate of crises was how many people I have out there as a support network. I have been overwhelmed by the folks offering help, a listening ear, a cup of coffee. Hopefully I can connect with these folks once I'm up for making phone calls and typing emails. Their kind words meant a lot.

A sad night

2010-11-19T00:15:00.000-05:00

We lost our Gary today. It's been one day short of 3 weeks that they had the first appointment with the oncologist. His liver function deteriorated that rapidly. Thankfully, he was at home, in no pain, and at peace. His family was with him, and in his final days he had gotten many visits from loved ones. When we saw him last weekend, he was on enough morphine that he slept most of the time. We did speak with him for a few minutes while he was lucid though. At that point, he could only ingest water. K is devastated, as he was incredibly close to his uncle.

Gary was a father, husband, grandfather, uncle, and friend. He had the most wonderful way of making everyone around him feel comfortable and at ease. He charmed my mom and gram, sending my mom a card afterward. He was an incredible chef, who could make a three-course gourmet meal just by looking in the fridge and putting things together. He was an artist, whose works will live on around the country. He was a sort of nihilist progressive. His laughter filled his home.

In our lives, he was one of my favorite in-laws, one who didn't inadvertently intimidate me. I always felt welcome in his home. He gave me insight into the experiences that made K who he is, and was a confidante and guide for my husband. I'm not sure what we'll to without him.

A craptavaganza of an autumn

2010-11-12T00:43:00.001-05:00

And I'm just now coming out of it. To recap in a single post:

Had my first interview since moving to LA. Position was exactly what I wanted to be doing and where I wanted to be. And it would double my paid leave, meaning I might have time to take a vacation beyond my visits home, sick days, and doctor's appointments. Was one of two finalists. Didn't get it. Went into a funk that's not quite over yet about my future.
Have had serious financial issues since July because 1: my husband didn't find it necessary to read his syllabus for Moot Court and 2: the financial aid office at K's university is run by people who don't believe in actually doing the job they're paid to, preferring to spend their days chatting with friends down the hall over coffee. Those are finally dealt with for the next 3 months or so, assuming the car doesn't break down, the house doesn't need any significant repairs, and all the residents therein don't have any health issues.
New boss who is good in her own way but much more demanding than her predecessor. So in addition to additional duties, she's inserting herself into my end of the editing, whereas before no one really asked much about that. This, combined with the disappointment about the rejection, has meant a lot of non-happy days at the salt mines.
The general pressures of being a law student's wife.
One of my favorite of K's family members is dying, very quickly, after a cancer diagnosis. At the beginning of the month we were planning Thanksgiving dinner. Now it looks like we may be holding his funeral then. It's heartbreaking on so many levels, especially for K, who has lost both parents in the past 4 years and will soon have just about no blood relatives, except for his cousin.

But on the bright side, I have gotten into the habit of going to the gym 2 or 3 nights a week, such that I actually miss it when I don't go. As a result, I have lost a few pounds and am toning up a bit. Yoga is my next target: I am as flexible as frozen taffy. Also, being depressed on the sofa has meant a whole hell of a lot of knitting: finished a pair of pink stripey knee socks for the niecelet and am cruising through a pair of green socks for me. Next project on the agenda: A baby blanket for K's uncle, who is about to procreate for the first time at age 50. I think I'll do Stitch and Bitch's big bad baby blanket, which has been a success for me several times.

Upper-crust crusts

2010-09-13T20:56:00.000-06:00

Over the past month, we've been out a few times with friends (we've actually got friends!) and had some tasty eats that are above our usual price point. (One of the dilemmas of having friends our age is that most of them are settled in their professional lives and can afford to e-at out at mid-price restaurants.)

First was Sara's, sort of upscale Indian. I had the saag paneer: delish. We all tried each other's dishes, and everything was great.

Another evening, we went to Barcelona tapas, which is actually next door to Sara's. The tapas were all expertly made and very fresh, and the sangria was incredible. (We drank about $30 worth of it.) It was telling though, that our friends commented about how reasonable the food was when the total came to about $25 each. They're still very cool though, just not students anymore.

We keep attempting to try a new Moroccan place just up the street. Our first visit ended with a power outage about 5 minutes after we got our drinks (the entire block was out). Then we walked up on Thursday, and it was closed, presumably for Eid. I guess we'll try again come next payday.

Otherwise, we're cooking a lot at home. I've been on a baking jag, having made whole wheat beer bread, hordes of buttermilk biscuits, banana bread. We've been doing our usual stocking up for the end of the semester: chili, broccoli soup, split pea soup, gumbo z'herbes, red beans and sausage. Plus, it's been so hot that we've been doing a lot of salads. I'm looking forward to fall and making squash dishes and more soups.

Home again, home again

2010-08-09T20:08:00.000-06:00

Had a remarkably good visit to WV, excepting some travel issues at the beginning (my plane had brake issues!). The reunion was a great deal of fun, and I got to see all the folks I wanted to see and none that I didn't. I caught up with some great friends from school who I haven't seen in 20 years. I also chatted with my cousin, who I fell out of touch with it when I went off to WVU.

I also got to hang out with the niecelet for a while on two different nights. She is all geared up to start kindergarten: I got a tour of her school supplies, much to her mother's consternation. I wonder if I was ever that eager. She's old enough now that she knows who I am and thinks I'm interesting to be with, as opposed to being caught up in her own pursuits. I think I may have agreed to spend the night with her next time I come in. (She's good at wheedling me, since I am unaccustomed to the ways of little girls.)

Kevin has an OK time as well, I think. At the very least, it was a break from the semester, though he's still working on the paper for his independent project. Family is all in tolerable health, although as usual my gram is trying to do too much and my dad not enough. Had some wonderful food while there (I could bathe in my gram's mashed potatoes like I was in a mud spa), though too much heavy food upset my digestion a bit: I'm not used to eating more than a yogurt or cereal for breakfast.

Not sure when I'll get home next, with our finances so tight this year and me barely missing last year's spate of snowstorms. And, of course, it will depend on how soon I can build up vacation time again.

Vacation time

2010-07-28T18:57:00.000-06:00

Sort of. Going home for a few days for my summer visit and my 20-year high school reunion, which just makes me feel decrepit. It'll be nice to be off work and to visit with my family, but it's not quite a "real" vacation where I get to set my own agenda, experience new things, or relax for that matter. In addition, I always get a bit tense when the spouse goes with me, although this time he's coming down a day late. I know that most of the time there, he's missing the dogs, thinking about projects at home, sleeping in his own bed, or doing something more interesting than watching the Weather Channel with my gram. But this go-round we'll have a rental car, which will provide some autonomy, and I plan to drive to Morgantown one day to visit friends. And, most importantly, I'm not at work, which is what matters.

Queen's up on the soapbox

2010-07-26T22:17:00.000-06:00

Meet Mother Nature Is Pissed, my subject-specific outlet for screaming into the ether.

NOLA in July

2010-07-19T21:52:00.000-06:00

Been hot as hell here this month, so I'm thinking as little as possible so as not to generate heat. Thus, little posting this month. Also, I've been working on ideas for a blog called "Mother Nature Is Pissed." Everything here slows down a bit this time of year. Most people lie low or leave town. We've tried at the former and will do the latter in another week, when we head to WV. So here's what has been happening with us:

* The 4th was noneventful. We had considered going downtown with Kev's classmate, K, but that evening we were both tired after working around the house (I was cleaning, Kev was working on our fence).After nearly 2 months without a vacation day (we don't have Memorial Day off) and taking over some my boss's responsibilities, I've been on the edge. We'll try again for a winter growing season, I think.

* We've been eating at home a lot, mainly easy things like sandwiches and grain salads with fresh veggies from the farmer's market, soups and chili from the freezer supply (got to empty the freezer over the summer in case of hurricane. I'm never very hungry during the summer because of the heat. We've tried a couple new restaurants as of late. R&O's is one of those old institutions. We went because Kevin was looking for traditional pizza. He enjoyed the pizza, although the sauce was a bit sweeter than we're used to. Same for the spaghetti I had, which had a good spice to it but little oregano, basil, or the herbed version I'm used to. They did, however, have a killer chocolate rum cake, which the spouse has tried to replicate with great success. Another night he was feeling the urge for a nontraditional burger, and Phil's Grill fit the bill. You basically build your own. Next on our list, probably come payday, is a new Moroccan place just up the street on St. Charles, in a location that has been the Bermuda Triangle of restaurants.

Send Your Suggestions

2010-07-19T21:17:00.000-06:00

After spending much of May and June infuriated about the Gulf Gusher, I decided that I needed to create a spot to vent before I ended up getting arrested or losing my mind. So, I'm in the process of creating a new blog where I can post information about the environment, how we're screwing it up, and attempts to ameliorate the effects (since we're past the point where they can be stopped).

To that end, I want to pick your brains: What are your favorite resources? Books? Web sites? Blogs? In a world where "research institutes" funded by Exxon-Mobil are putting out disinformation, I want to find the best science-based resources out there.

Wrapping up June

2010-06-29T20:15:00.004-06:00

As I once again neglected the blog over the course of the month, here are a few highlights.

Food: We found a new restaurant to add to our rotation: Joey K's looks to be a good source when we're hanking for a burger, sandwiches, and comfort food. I had a good basic burger and Kev a decent chicken Parmesan.

Activism: Kevin and I have attended multiple protests regarding the disaster in the Gulf. For the Krewe of Dead Pelicans, we decorated blue umbrellas with black paint, streamers, and stuffed animals to simulate the destruction of the ecosystem there. In that "New Orleans is such a small town" way, I ran into at least 5 people I knew there, from kickball, the library world, and the humanist group. Additionally, we went down to the riverfront park known as The Fly for Hands Across the Sand, to express our support for the drilling moratorium. My heart is broken over all this. I keep thinking about how I'll never do the winter bird count at Grand Isle, the dogs will never swim in the Gulf (although some people seem to have no problem with their children swimming in it), and how easily this could decimate the food chain. I'm hugely angry as well, particularly as my elected officials seem to think their petroleomasters can do no wrong. Every time we can smell the spill (which was just about every day last week), I want to stick Mary Landrieu's head in it. Meanwhile, reports from the Mississippi kin are that they're having tar balls wash up on the beaches there, which means it's not long until it hits the bayou across the street from them, home to a huge pelican rookery.

Animals are all fine. Molly has been having a helluva time with allergies and scratches despite our best efforts. Tristan is maturing a wee bit, though he's still a cuddle bug. Ms. Cali is now on special gushy food, as she is showing the first signs of kidney disease (for a 16-year-old cat, that's not bad). We've created a monster: Some days I'll feed her at 7, and she wants more food at 10. She refuses to eat kibble by itself. Kevin's convinced she'll be turning tricks on the corner for tuna soon.

The garden is having a bad time. The plants themselves are strong and hearty, but we've gotten almost no actual food: I think we had one cucumber so far and two kohlrabi.

Work is work. Coworker and I survived the process of putting the journal out by ourselves, although the budget may be up a bit because we didn't know how to go about reining in our colleague, who tends to make a lot of nitpicky fixes at the final stage, when every change is $3. Haven't sent out any applications this month. Meanwhile, I learned that I didn't get the post at Local University at a librarian happy hour, when everyone started congratulating the person who did get it. I managed to stay there for a whole half-hour before going to my car to sob. I still haven't received an official rejection letter.

It's been a fairly social month: have had brunch with friends, went to a wine and cheese potluck and game night, and had one of Kev's classmates over for a movie night. On a surprising note, my husband, who generally would rather make out with Ann Coulter than socialize, wants to have a party so that our various friends and acquaintances call all meet one another. It'll have to happen in August, because several folks are studying for the bar, Kev's in classes, and we're heading to WV for my high school reunion. Something to look forward to, I think.

Checking in

2010-05-25T18:33:00.004-06:00

Damn, it's been almost 2 months to the day since I've been here. Where does the time go?

It's been a fairly turbulent spring, for one. Kevin has had one hell of a semester; thus, so have I. Long story short, don't believe what authorities tell you, be nice to people you perceive as underlings because generally they're the ones with real power, and always, always read the fine print. In the midst of all this was Jazz Fest and my father's visit. He can be high maintenance at times, and I was especially worried because he's been in poor health, diagnosed with COPD this spring. But he had a wonderful time, ate a lot of good food, absolutely loved New Orleans, and enjoyed a visit with his granddogs. (He was going to sneak the spaniel back to WV, but I quickly disabused him of that notion.)

As for me, stasis has been part of my problems. No bites on any of the job apps I was so excited about, which means that after 2 years I still haven't found a library job. It's looking like my backup plan -- waiting until Kevin is working and then applying for the public library positions I can't afford to work at right now -- will need to be used after all. There's still a freeze on the open positions at my current employer, so I don't even have that to keep me hopeful. I've been getting discouraged, which isn't a good thing.

However, I'm now a sock knitter. I've finished up a pair for Rosemary (because halfway through the first one I realized they weren't going to fit my size 10s), and started a pair for me in a self-marbling yarn of bright, bright colors.

The garden grows. We've had enough rain so far this spring to keep everyone alive. We've got several tomato plants, 2 zucchinis, 2 cucumbers, peppers, and kohlrabi. It looks like the tangerine will produce more than the 5 fruit we had last year. I'm not sure about the lemon. We also have the usual assortment of flowers, herbs (our front porch is now an herb garden), and plants. Kevin is thinking about moving some hedges in the front next to the sidewalk to give us a bit of an edging (and keep the dogs across the street from crapping in our yard), but I'm not sure he'll be able to work on it before the summer semester begins (he's taking at least one class, and either doing an externship with Catholic Charities or taking a second).

As for the summer, I'm up to a whole 4 days of leave time, which I will be using to go back to WV for my 20th high school reunion. I'm not one of those folk for whom high school was the best time of my life, but I'm morbidly curious about what's happened to people I haven't seen in 2 decades. And, it'll give me a comparatively long visit, which will do until the winter, when I can burn all my leave visiting again.

Stay tuned for my raging about the Gulf oil disaster.

Family visits and basketball

2010-03-28T16:39:00.003-05:00

Baby brother came down to visit last week. It was rather momentous because a) this was the first time we'd been together for an extended period since my niece was born 5 years ago and b) this was the first time he'd flown in 15 years.

It was a really good visit, although it started off on a poor note with his plane arriving 1-1/2 hours late. Since it was originally supposed to arrive just before midnight, this was not a good thing. I think we managed to balance getting him out to see the city and with just relaxing. (Because he's working and going to school, he's getting about 3 hours of sleep a night.) His new hobby is golfing, and he's taken it up with a passion. He mailed his golf clubs down here before he came and made trips out to the courses at City Park and Audubon Park, the latter of which turns out to be in the top 5 public courses in the country. We got him some seafood, red beans and rice, jambalaya, ethnic food, and alcohol. He got to see some of the city's beautiful architecture, which he was much enamored with. He went to the French Quarter on a Saturday night and saw 4 pairs of breasts. He also got to sleep in a lot, watch a lot of basketball, snuggle with my dogs, and eat some at-home meals with Kevin and me.

We also got to do a lot of talking -- He told me some things that my mom hasn't been mentioning in our talks, explained about the turbulent relationship with his partner told me about school and his life, etc. I had forgotten how funny he is.

The visit was shared somewhat with another "family" member, a longtime friend from college and DC who came to visit at the end of my brother's trip for the 1st and 2nd rounds of the NCAA men's tournament. We got tickets at the game for BB (which were cheaper than ours --damn you Ticketmaster!) and went together. Everyone got along well, although it was a bit crowded for Kevin, during a busy time for him. However, the spouse was a trouper. We basically had 3 days dedicated to college basketball, between the games we saw here and the other tournament games on TV (including our beloved Mountaineers). A few random thoughts:

* I've discovered a fan group even more arrogant and annoying than Notre Dame fans -- Kentucky fans.
* Pep band members seem much the same the world over.
* We attended a lot of low-scoring games. Brian and I joked that they were going to have to start playing "first one to 50, wins."
* Basketball can be a lot like a dance -- people weaving in and out in patterns, spinning around one another, stopping on a dime.

BB left very early Saturday morning, and Brian left Sunday evening (after the WVU game). The house seemed so silent with no extra people in more than a week, no events to attend, restaurants to try. But now I can get back to the gym again (especially now that I've gotten ABX for the sinus infection that's been bothering me since Mardi Gras), sit and knit when I want to, and watch chick flicks. (When I get PMSy, I become a couch potato for a week.)

But, the excitement will soon return, as my dad is coming down to visit at the end of April for Jazz Fest.

Raging against the dying of the light and other anger

2010-03-16T21:08:00.003-05:00

I've been away for a month or so. Following Mardi Gras, I struggled with a cold/sinus infection for more than two weeks, for the second time this year. Except for the occasional dog walk, I pretty much came home from work and crashed on the couch for 5 hours and then went to bed.

So, on to tonight's rambling rant:

Last week, I lost an old friend of mine very unexpectedly. His funeral was today. We met more than 15 years ago in undergrad but really became friends after school when we ended up living in the DC Metro area. For several years, our pack was at his house or out together at least once a week. I dated his best friend for more than a year. About 10 years ago, after a lot of struggle and a lot of turmoil with those around him, my friend admitted to himself and the outside world that he was gay. I wasn't surprised, and I was happy for him because it seemed to bring him some peace -- he wasn't drinking to excess every night, he started seeing a therapist to address some serious family history issues, and his professional life was soaring.

After a while, we didn't hang out so much -- I moved farther away and started graduate school. I was also in a bad relationship, and I hated to bring the BF around my old friends. Then I got into a wonderful relationship at the same time my friend did. I remember going out for dinner with him and us both saying "I've been seeing someone" at the same time. He and his boyfriend were so different (imagine wild red-headed Irishman with a very calm Filipino), but I saw my friend find some peace. Then he started graduate school, and we saw even less of one another. Eventually, about 4 years ago I moved far away and had a serious depressive episode during which I pretty much cut myself off from many of my friends, and we only spoke online once every few months. After another move, we reconnected via Facebook and occasionally chatted and emailed one another. We ranted online together when Prop 8 was passed, and lamented the election of the new governor of Virginia.

During those years, he continued to date the same man, and I married mine. There was some concern at one point because his partner was about to finish his PhD, which would end his student visa. But his partner got a full-time university position, and his employer sponsored his work visa. But the period brought home to me and others the inequality they faced: For the U.S. immigration force, their relationship meant nothing. They never had a formal commitment ceremony, but after about a year, they wore identical bands on their ring fingers. Their families knew them as a couple. But in the eyes of the law, particularly the state of Virginia where they both lived, that meant nothing. Under state law, they couldn't enter into "arrangements between persons of the same sex purporting to bestow the privileges or obligations of marriage." Hell, my friend worried about going out to eat with his partner, afraid one of his students or a parent (he was a teacher) might see them and complain to the school administration. Teachers and other state employees are often held to a nebulous "morality clause," that can mean everything from getting pregnant outside of marriage (or living with a partner sans ring, as a librarian pal found out), so he had legitimate concern, unfortunately.

I had meant to IM my friend the week before he died, to see if they had thought about driving a few miles into the District of Columbia to apply for a marriage license. I was happy at the thought that the two of them finally could have a few of the legal protections I could. But I was crazy with work and personal issues, and never got around to sending a message. Now, I'll never get the chance.

My friend was injured two Saturdays ago and died last week. His partner was with him there much of the time. However, had my friend's parents so wished, they likely could have had him barred from the hospital. A mile or two away from the U.S. Capitol, they were second-class citizens.

So, I am angry today. I am pissed and livid that these two wonderful men were considered lesser in the eyes of the law, that their love wasn't enough to guarantee them a life together. I have always done what I could to support marriage equality. But now, if you don't think all people are equal, if you support an institution that doesn't believe in equality for all, even if it does other good in the world, get out of my sight and don't give me crap about fierce advocacy, it's only a two-minute speech, or it's not the hierarchy and not the laity. Go shovel that bullshit into a field where it belongs.

Standing Ovation

2010-02-12T20:19:00.003-05:00

Thank you, STFU Parents!

“Well, *I’m* crying instead of laughing, Jessica, but only because you named a human being “Justyce”. Hasn’t anyone ever taught you the headline test? Find a headline and replace the name of a prominent politician, doctor, lawyer, basically anything except a pop star, with the name you’re planning for your kid. Like “President Justyce McKayla Madyson Smith to sign nuclear arms treaty” or “Top Johns Hopkins surgeon Kayden McKendra Bristol Jones to perform first goat heart transplant”. Does it sound stupid? Then yeah, probably should think of some other names.”

I'm discovering the most frightening names among people I went to high school with (or, Maude help us, their children). My personal favorite was Wylder Winner, with Blade coming in as runner up.

I want to cross-stitch this onto pillows and give them to every pregnant person in my hometown.

February, in like a lion

2010-02-02T21:13:00.003-05:00

Or something like that.

We finally have all of the water issues fixed, except for the piss-poor (pun intended) pressure in the bathroom sink. Apparently the secret was cleaning out the filters on the faucets (and the washer) multiple times to get rid of the gunk that the frozen pipes had produced.

Mardi Gras season is fully underway. We went to our first parade on Saturday: Krewe du Vieux. It's the closest to the original parades: satirical, political, raunchy, of the people, and with small mule-drawn floats. It was a good, but cold, time. We started out at party at a sort of friend's apartment (we met via scootering, but she's a library school student) and then went together to watch the parade. We got separated at one point, and Kevin and I moseyed on our own for a while. Then, in another instance reminding me that New Orleans is just a big small town, we ran into our neighbors and hung out with them for a while. We went home around 9, mainly because there was a house of angry dogs awaiting us. In other news, no word about the position I applied for, which is rather disheartening. In an interesting coincidence, a librarian on the search committee was at the party before KdV. She didn't indicate that she remembered I had applied (of course, she was drinking a gigantoid daiquiri, so who knows), and I didn't either. I'm not sure it would have been appropriate.
Oh, and I've decided to kick my butt in gear and try to get in better shape before my 20th (EGADS!) high school reunion this summer. I've joined SparkPeople, which provides free food tracking, fitness plans, nutrition advice, etc. After a week, the scale hasn't moved (but since I'm bloated to hell and back, I'd be really surprised if it did), but I have more energy. And that's huge.

Off to work on my German, which I have been neglecting since the new year, which is making me wonder whether I should take German 2 or not.

Happy New Year

2010-01-21T23:40:00.002-05:00

I've had a hell of a January so far. The week after New Year's, Kevin was sick. Then I left for WV on the 6th. That was fun but cold and snowy, and my dad was in the hospital (he's OK now, but will have to deal with some long-term issues related to black lung). I made it back Sunday night on my way to getting sick. (My immune system, which had been successfully fighting Kevin's germs, finally crapped out after 6 hours of airport air.) After barely making it through Monday, I burned up every bit of my vacation as well as my personal holiday being off sick for a day and a half. Now, I'm getting sick again.

In the midst of all this, every faucet in the house is misbehaving because the pipes froze while I was in WV. (I would have been paying enough attention to the weather to know to keep the water running overnight.) We had to replace an internal part of the bathtub fixture, which wouldn't turn off for 3 days. Then the valve in the toilet needed replacing, and the kitchen has almost no water pressure. Now, it looks like we're going to have to replace the toilet seal underneath again. Meanwhile, outside in the laundry shed, the washer is having load balancing issues. Oh, and Kevin hurt his back checking out the frozen pipes and has been barely able to move for 2 weeks, causing him to have to cancel the physical therapy appointment about the shoulder pain that keeps him from sleeping more than 5 hours at a time.

Please tell me February will be better.

2010 Reading Plan

2010-01-03T15:23:00.003-05:00

After once again not reaching my goal of reading 50 books in the year (I think I got to about 40), I've decided to take a somewhat different approach. I'm going to focus on about 30-35 books I've been meaning to read, many of which I actually own. It's a mix of genres, lengths, subjects, ranging from nonfiction works on war to mass market paperbacks about dog detectives. On the list so far are:

After the Reich
Fatherland
Castle in the Forest
Alternative Alcott
Louisa May
Freethinkers
Bright-Sided
Good Omens (a reread)
The Afternoon Wmen
Bienville's Dilemma
The 900 Days
What to Eat
Sandman (reread)
Promethea
Away With All Gods
Jesus, Interrupted
Something by Sarah Vowell
Thereby Hangs a Tail
Anna Karenina
Villette
Agnes Grey
Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Wide Sargasso Sea
Under the Dome
The Geography of Nowhere
A Dog at Sea
The Secret Speech
Monongah
The Canon

Freiburg

2010-01-01T15:47:00.005-05:00

After spending about 25 minutes trying to get out of Tubingen, we got back on the highway headed toward Freiburg im Bresgau, where we were to spend the night. This was the one place where we stayed in a large hotel. We arrived to find tour buses full of Italian senior citizens and, again, Japanese tourists. Freiburg is another college town, home to one of the country's oldest universities, and the hotel was right next to the city's performing arts center.

After refreshing ourselves a bit, we decided to chase down something to eat. Walking up the main street from the hotel, there were tons of people out that night, including those coming out of or going into a multiplex. After taking in our immediate options, we ended getting falafel and gyros to go from a kebap shop. (Germany has an increasing number of Muslim immigrants, which has caused some problems over the years. But nonetheless you'll find a kebap shop in most city neighborhoods.) The sandwich was great, and the addition of cabbage added a very German spirit to it.
We sat and people-watched for a while, and I saw the first homeless people I'd seen in all of Europe. (Of course, they may have just been very grimy college students.)
The next day, I spent some time playing sea lion in the hotel pool (one of the reasons we had stayed there) before a noisy toddler drove me off, and then we did a walking tour of the town. We visited a bookstore and took advantage of some sales, and I almost came home with a great pair of shoes, but then felt guilty about the expense, and then regretted not getting them. It had these medieval-era open drainage gutters that were used to fight fires and water livestock, but now make a nice foot cooler on a hot summer day. (Incidentally, Freiburg is the sunniest and warmest city in Germany.)

The highlight of the old town was the Munster, the building of which began in the 1200s. Yeah, you read that right.
Even though this was about the 10th cathedral I'd been in, I was still blown away by it.

One of the more interesting parts of the city was its honesty about the destruction of the Jewish community during the 1930s and 1940s. Every building with a Jewish business or a Jewish home had been marked with a plaque indicating who or what had been located there and when they had been expelled.

The Alps and Tubingen

2010-01-01T13:27:00.010-05:00

So, after breakfast in Innsbruck from a bakery (wonderful bread with meat and cheese, as well as some pastries to give us a sugar rush), a quick stop in a bookstore to buy a cool messenger back with a map of Europe in vinyl, and mailing all of the postcards we'd written the day before, we started out for the Western side of Germany. Actually, we were headed to Strasbourg, France, where Kevin was supposed to get a tour of the International Criminal Court there from one of his professors in Vienna. Between here and there, however, stood the Alps. Because Kevin's coffee was still kicking in, I ended up driving that first section of the trip. This was a really whimsical rest stop I made Kevin take a picture of:
Also visible from the rest area was this:
The mountains were utterly magnificent, and the road was lined with small villages that looked like they'd fallen off the pages of "Heidi" (that part of Austria is next to that part of Switzerland), with chalets in the valley where the fronts were covered with windowboxes filled with flowers. Next spring, I want to get more flowerboxes for the front of the house.
Unfortunately, after a point I had to let Kevin take over (about 10 years ago, I nearly slid off a mountain on US50 in WV, so I'm a little twitchy about driving in mountains) and just close my eyes a bit.
Unfortunately, shortly after we made it across the mountains into and had hit more traffic (as I mentioned before, almost all roadwork happened during the day) on the two-lane road we were on, it was apparent that we would not be making it to Strasbourg by the appointed time. So, when we got to the college town of Tubingen, we decided to stop for lunch and a visit.
This was in the state of Baden-Wurttemberg, in the Swabian region, along the Neckar river. I was rather excited to see it, because the narratives in my old German book took place in Tubingen. After Kev sent an email to his professor making his apologies, we had a small lunch and then took in the town. Among the sights, a wonderful old town square with medieval buildings, a gorgeous town park and botanic garden.
We had more ice cream as well. Oh, and I left my wallet in the bathroom in the Marktplatz, where it was found by a middle-aged woman who apparently was one of the few in the country to speak almost no English. But as we were coming out of the bathroom smiling and nodding at one another, we ran into Kevin, who served as translator. We thanked her profusely, and she told us how she was sitting on the toilet and looked up, saw my wallet, and thought "that doesn't belong there." Crisis averted, we took in the historic town square, where one of the shops proudly advertised that Herman Hesse had worked there as a bookseller's apprentice, and walked up to the top of the town hill, where there was an incredible view of the city below.As all of the places we wanted to see in that region were fairly close together, we drove on in the late afternoon to Freiburg, where we were spending the night.

Innsbruck

2009-12-29T22:25:00.009-05:00

Ok, so I suck at being motivated (hopefully, that will be changing), but I thought I'd at least wrap up the European vacation stuff. I'll add pictures when my computer is not being a jerk

After Salzburg, we drove 3/4 of the way back to Munich, and then drove into the far western corner of Austria, to Innsbruck. We passed an inland sea along the way, where this was taken. This was probably my favorite place on the trip: It's in the Alps and is amazingly beautiful. (I am by birth and spirit, and will always be, a mountain girl.) The city is split by the River Inn, which was roiling from all of the rain they'd been having.
We had some amazing Greek food before heading into the old city (as well as a great sangria-like wine cocktail). Many of the buildings dated back to the 1500s. The Altstadt is full of narrow alleys lined with shops and cafes. While we were doing our gift shopping for family and friends back home, we had more of that European gelato (by this point, I had narrowed my favorite combination down to chocolate and raspberry).

In addition to wandering around the historic areas and visiting yet more ancient cathedrals (I haven't been into that many churches over the past decade), we also checked out a German version of a Target, where back-to-school sales were in full swing and we were looking for a CD and some other mundane items. Not a discount store, this shop made our mouths water.
I was impressed by the European tendency toward minimal transportation. If you can't get there on foot or by public transport, you take a bike. If you can't take a bike, you take a scooter. (Kev was lusting after a scoot that isn't available in the U.S., trying to figure out how we could get it home.) If that won't work, you take a small car. We also spent some time at an outdoor cafe, writing out postcards to friends and family. After days of rain, the weather was finally sunny and bright, which made the Golden Roof shine all the more.
For dinner, we went to a biergarten, where we had lots of starchy food with sausages and the local brew, which got me tipsy in about 10 minutes. After a nice stroll back to the hotel (just outside the historic district), Kevin went to play with night photography and I went back to the hotel to read and see how much German I could understand on the TV.

The Thanksgiving List

2009-11-26T12:15:00.003-05:00

In an attempt to get back to blogging again (some day I'll finish the Europe travelogue), here's the annual list of some of the things I'm thankful for this year:

A husband who puts up with my crazy, my leaving cabinet and closet doors open, and my dislike of fungi and onions.
The furkids: thumpy tails, waggy butts, nose kisses, and kitty cuddles.
Our new household member, Mischa, who has fit right in and who doesn't chase the cat.
My WV family and their continued pretty-good health (except for the broken knee) and fortune, and that I'm finally starting to get them down here to visit my world.
My Gulf Coast family, who have welcomed me into the fold.
An evacuation-free hurricane season.
The wonderful people and groups I've been introduced to over the past year.
That New Orleans is finally starting to become home.
In this economy, having a full-time job that almost supports two people and four animals.
Student loans that fill in the gaps, generally.
That in 2 weeks, law school will be half over
Facebook, for reintroducing me to long-lost friends and connecting me to new ones.
The lovely New Orleans weather that keeps my world green and my temperament less dark.
The five tangerines and multiple Myer lemons grown from our very own trees.
For finally getting to see Europe.
The Chatties for their friendship and support, even though I've only met a few of you in person.

The hills are alive . . . with the sound of Salzburg

2009-09-28T20:24:00.004-06:00

After a lovely breakfast in Munchen, we hopped on the Autobahn and headed into Austria, going to Salzburg, former home of the Von Trapp family and one W.A. Mozart. Was still raining when we arrived, after a rather confusing detour caused by minor street flooding and some weird traffic plan that wants people to park at a municipal garage and take a shuttle on rainy days. En route to the hotel, near the city's old town, we got befuddled and ended up driving down a pedestrian zone. Luckily, we weren't the only ones.

After a quick lunch at a health food shop (where Kevin was complimented on his fabulous German), we went walking around town. Our first stop was the Mirabell Palace, whose gardens were made famous in The Sound of Music (we didn't do any of the multitude of Von Trapp tours around the region). Even in the rain, the gardens were absolutely stunning.

Kevin and the fountain seen in Do-Re-Mi.
In one area of the garden were all of these great little medieval troll people. Here's one.

After sloshing around the gardens, we headed into the old city for ice cream (there's gonna be a whole separate post on our food experiences) and to just walk around and soak it all up (quite literally, unfortunately). Here's one of the fabulous alleyways in the Altstadt.

I can't remember if this was the Rathaus or the Residenz (yes, another one).

The spouse again, ready to molest an artichoke at the outdoor market. You just can't keep that man away from produce.

Mozart's home during most of his life, now home to the Mozarteum. When we were in Salzburg, the museum was filled with Japanese tourists. One of Salzburg's big tourist products is Mozartkugeln, a sort of truffle filled with pistachio paste and covered in a chocolate layer or two. We got ours at the grocery store, which Kevin (of course) turned into an educational experience. The Mozart house was surprisingly large to me, but apparently the family was well-off when they purchased it and the space included a piano sales showroom.

Because of the weather, we stayed in for the evening rather than heading to one of the nightly classical concerts held at Mirabell during the summer months. Dinner was Indian food, continuing our tradition of eating Indian food across the globe. One of the highlights involved the fact that German restaurants are much less strict about allowing well-behaved dogs inside. A friendly golden retriever owned by the Russians next to us came over and said hello several times during our meal (particularly after he realized we had 5 pounds of chocolate stashed under the table). Since we were both missing the pooches something awful, it was a welcome visit.

Munchen memories

2009-09-27T19:19:00.004-06:00

Days 1 and 2 of the trip were spent in Munich, except that it took me most of Day 1 to get TO Munich. The weather was lousy, and so we missed some of the great treasures of the city, the Englischer Garten, in particular. Our hotel was right on it, so we got a bit of a taste of it (the garden has these great fast-moving manmade brooks (for lack of a better term) that run through them, and one passed through the back yard of the hotel. However, it was still too soggy for a hike. Also, we missed the Alte Pinakothek (old art museum) and its Neue brother, which were both closed on Mondays. Let this be a warning to you: Check the hours for attractions before you go, lest you walk a mile across town in the rain to find that your destination is closed.

So, what did we see? Well, the first night there Kevin and I were exhausted after too much travel (he had a long train ride from Wien), so we had dinner at an Austrian place across the street. There, I had my one and only schnitzel. I also learned some important vocabulary: helles for light beer and dunkel for dark beer.

On Monday, we spent a couple hours touring the Residenz, which was the palace for the Bavarian kings. The place was incredible, being a palace and all. The building is also now home to an Egyptian museum (also closed on Mondays) as well as the Bavarian opera and a children's theater.

Part of the gardens at the Residenz: The Germans like their green space.

A chamber trio busking just inside the gates.

The chapel. As you can see, it's a bit ostentatious. Much of the palace was done in the Rococo style, which was developed by folks who thought Baroque was too bland and not flashy enough.

An etched glass flask. Kevin took lots of photos of interiors and objects d'art. However, he took almost no pictures of the great outdoors, which is normally what I take photos of.

Me, sitting in this Roman style palazzo area of the Residenz.

St. George slaying the dragon. You can see the detail from here, but it is completely encrusted in jewels. Those crosses: made of rubies. The dragon: emeralds.

From there, we walked to Marienplatz and a church. We passed this great sculpture along the way. What you don't see in the picture is that across the entrance way is another sculpture that is the exact relief of this one, like puzzle pieces. It was the entrance to a business of some sort.

The old rathaus in Marienplatz. While in the square, we had a tolerable meal with mediocre service. It was a lesson we learned a couple of time -- restaurants and cafes in the shadows of tourist destinations are rarely your best option.

One other stop we made during the day, because I'm a total geek, was the Bavarian State Library, which was open until 2 am. It was much more like an academic library in terms of collection (I went cruising through the biomedical journals to see what they had) and tone. Everyone was quietly working or studying (seriously, I coughed and got the death glare from several tables). I miss that aspect of libraries -- I'm a girl who likes my quiet.

That evening was a special treat. We went to see "Harry Potter und die halb-blud Prinz," which was dubbed in German with no subtitles. I got to stretch my German vocabulary a bit, although I still had a better sense for what was happening than Kevin, since I knew the books. (He thought that "horcrux" was just a German word he didn't know. To force me to practice my German, Kevin made me buy the tickets (he's mean that way), where I learned that in Germany you often buy movie tickets for a specific section or even a specific seat. Dinner, strangely enough, was at a little tapas bar near the movie theater. Tasty food and a great "white sangria." Afterward, we stopped in an ice cream parlor/Internet cafe to check our email and almost saw a fight when the owner tried to kick out two completely wasted college students.

Intro to Europe Posts

2009-09-11T20:55:00.004-06:00

OK, I really suck. It's been more than a month since I got back, and I'm only now sitting down to start typing. In my defense, the time zone difference took almost a week to recover from, I had the usual other stuff happening, Kevin started class, and we had dog guests who kept me occupied. I had wanted to use Kevin's laptop to keep up while I was there, but very few hotels had wireless access, or Internet access at all.

In general, I had a terrific time, despite the weather and hormones working against me. It rained the first 3 days I was there, while we were in Munich and Salzberg. Then, the weather got very hot and humid, which is tricky in countries where most hotels and restaurants don't have air conditioning. Culturally, it was interesting to see nations that are Western yet very different from the U.S. And, I did get to pick up some German (who knew one of my first words learned would be for whole-grain bread?).

The travel went well. Singapore Air gets my vote for great airline. I think that was what flights were probably like in the 1950s. I didn't have any major delays, and I missed a couple of biggies (the helicopter crash in New York, and a shut-down terminal due to an unidentified bag) just barely. In the second instance, we were very lucky, because Kevin usually waits until the last minute before boarding so that he can smoke. This time he came through security early. Had he been about 30 minutes later (his usual schedule), he would have missed the flight, because security was shut down due to the problems on the other side. Several people due on our flight missed it for that reason.

Driving wasn't so bad, except for a 3-hour drive that turned into a 6-hour trip after my transatlantic flight. The problems were caused by rain, heavy traffic (apparently, the Netherlands was camping in Bavaria that weekend -- all of them), and construction (with their stringent labor laws, nobody's doing work overnight there). Oh, and the Islamic version of a family of guidos jumping in front of me at the rental car counter. But coffee provided the boost I needed. Then I managed to miss a turn when I came into Munich, and got lost. After about 15 minutes of driving around, I managed to find a street that had been in my directions. I got to the hotel, after not seeing my husband for a month, and he was . . . asleep. My blood sugar was dropping, I was crashing, and I shoved him awake and immediately started yelling. I will probably be hearing about that until the day I die. (In his defense, he had been anxiously waiting for me, especially since there was no way for us to contact one another without cell phones, and fell asleep.) A shower, a nap, and we were in better spirits.

So that I can get this down in a somewhat orderly fashion, I'm gonna write this from city to city, since that was how we traveled. Of course, there will be the occasional digression, 'cause I am the queen of the non sequitur. (Ooooh, shiny . . . )

Summer Reading Program Book #9

2009-08-27T20:14:00.002-06:00

The Watchmen, by Alan Moore

Considered to be a seminal work of graphic fiction (or any fiction, for that matter: Time named it one of its top 100 books of the 20th century), The Watchmen is a story of fear on the brink of apocalypse, of collateral damage in life as well as war. It takes place during an alternative 1980s, in which Richard Nixon is president, costumed heroes once fought crime, and a scientist who fell into a reactor is all that keeps the world from nuclear war. The picture is bleak, even in times of peace. But Moore's words, wonderfully illustrated by Dave Gibbons are as thought-provoking now as they were 20+ years ago when the book was published.

Summer Reading Program Book #8

2009-08-15T21:21:00.002-06:00

On the Beach, by Nevil Shute

A Cold War classic from the late 50s, this is a novel about the horrors of war, being able to predict your death, and how individuals deal with the two. The book takes place in southern Australia in the early 1960s, 2 years after a nuclear holocaust has destroyed the Northern Hemisphere. Due to wind patterns, the radioactive particles are slowly making their way toward the South Pole, killing country by country, town by town as the cloud moves south. Among our cast of characters are an American submarine captain who was in the Pacific when disaster struck, an Aussie naval officer and his wife, a scientist, and a farmer's daughter who never got her opportunity to leave small-town life. As they and those around them wait for their inevitable doom, the reader has an incredible view into human nature and living in the face of death. And, hopefully we will all learn the book's lessons about the idiocy of nuclear war (though no one knows for sure, educated guesses are that the one that happens off-stage here was started accidentally, in what was basically an international pissing contest).

Summer Reading Program Book #7

2009-08-13T19:34:00.002-06:00

Dog on It by Spencer Quinn

Dog on It's Chet joins Midnight Louie, Mrs. Murphy and Tee Tucker, Randolph, and a host of other four-legged clue sniffers in this mystery novel. Here, our canine narrator is a private detective (and failed police dog) with his human partner, Bernie, living in Arizona. A missing honors student leads us into a case that left me guessing until the end. Along the way, we meet a variety of characters, canine and human, and pick up some insight into topics ranging from the suburbanization of the desert to custody loss. The relationship between Chet and Bernie rings true, and the anthropomorphism (except for the thinking in complete sentences in English) is comparatively minimal. The worst part of the book were depictions of animal abuse and scenes from a kill animal shelter -- I had to skip over those parts, including a chapter in which Chet is separated unwillingly from Bernie. The next one should be coming out next year. I'm looking forward to it as much as Chet anticipates a visit to the barbecue shack.

Back from vacation

2009-08-11T21:27:00.002-06:00

Returned on Sunday from my 7 days in Germany and Austria with Kevin. I meant to blog about it while I was there, but wireless access at hotels was fairly rare (the free kind, that is) and Kevin was too busy tending his Facebook farm to give me much time on his laptop. I have been too jetlagged and tired to string sentences together since I got back to post anything meaningful, but I hope to have some concrete details and photos up by the end of the weekend.

Suffice it to say that I had a very enjoyable time on my first visit to the Continent. I got to practice what little German I have, saw the beauty of Bavaria, drove through the Alps (literally, between the mountain passes and the tunnels), ate some wonderful and not-so-great food, got to experience similar but foreign cultures, drank a great deal of beer, and toured cities that go back 1,000 years.

Of course, there were some downsides. We were driving across 2 countries that make it transportation via auto rather difficult (to encourage public transit use), had various delays, and got lost on multiple occasions. Both trans-Atlantic flights made me think I was flying Screaming Baby Airways, and the differing travel styles between me and my spouse led to anxiety for me and some tension. But all in all, I'm glad I went. We're already planning our next trip over, which will have to wait until after Kevin graduates and finds gainful employment.

Summer Reading Program Book #6

2009-07-25T17:19:00.004-06:00

Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design and the Easter Bunny
by Barrett Brown and Jon P. Alston, PhD

In their look at the creationism/intelligent design movement in the United States, Brown (a writer for National Lampoon and Alston do what I've longed to see in the media: take these people as seriously as their arguments merit. Which is, to say, not at all. But the humor masks some important work: revealing the characters behind the movement and just how they've insinuated themselves into the government at all levels and discussing high-profile incidents and cases on the topic. Definitely a must-read for anyone concerned about the rise of the dodos.

However, I must note that the authors give remarkably short shrift to the Easter bunny. (-:

Dear Dogs,

2009-07-08T19:29:00.002-06:00

I know that having your male human gone is upsetting you terribly and that no amount of walks and bellyrubs can make it all better. However, please realize that I am not going to abandon you and leave you to starve. Even if I'm in an accident, my first thought upon consciousness will be of you and your needs. So, from now on, could you please stop the madness that ensues when I get home? To watch you three, you'd think Michael Vick had been standing outside the window taunting you all day.

Sincerely,
Your mama

The Husband Has Landed

2009-07-06T20:29:00.002-06:00

For those following such things, Kevin made it to Vienna with no problems, other than the fact that JFK sucks, particularly when you have an 8-hour layover. His hotel is cheap student fare, but it's in a beautiful area. He's done some walking around already, had some good eats, sat in a cafe drinking coffee and reading, and attended his first day of classes. His course for the first 2 weeks is comparative international law, and it's a 3-hour course stuffed into 2 weeks. He is in lectures from 8 am until 2 pm, with a lunch break. Many evenings the program has special events planned, like walking tours, a visit to a wine festival, and special museum visits. On the weekends, he'll be going to Prague, Salzburg, and Venice. Being an old fart and the only person who speaks German, he hasn't really bonded much with the other students, although the coordinator for the program has chatted with him quite a bit and took him to dinner, in part because he isn't the usual law student (she hates lawyers).

As for us on the homefront, we're doing fine. The dogs miss Kevin terribly, as evidenced [grrr, I hate nouns that have become verbs] by their general naughtiness and the fact that every time they hear a noise, they think he's come home. I miss him too, however we are using video chat to talk just about every day, though, so we're getting about the same level of communication as we do during the 3 weeks before finals. I am enjoying being able to sleep in the middle of the bed. But we can't wait to have him home, and I am so looking forward to touring bits of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland with my husband. This is our first long vacation since our wedding/honeymoon trip.

Kevin is on Facebook and has been posting photos, so if you're there and his friend, check them out.

Summer Reading Program Book #5

2009-07-06T20:14:00.002-06:00

Idiot America by Charles P. Pierce

The subtitle provides a succinct synopsis of this treatise of American anti-intellectualism in its present state and how it has impacted not just this country, but the entire planet: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. I found that this made a terrific follow-up to Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason. While Jacoby's language is erudite and intellectual, Pierce cuts through the bullshit and tells it like it is. His humor helps keep the horror of the insanity of his topic at bay.

But why listen to me? I found the following text, in a section about how the Bush administration managed to lie through its teeth to the American people about the threat posed by Iraq with little uproar by the majority of the populace (there was some resistance: a few hundred thousand of us marched the street of D.C. on a freezing today to demonstrate that we knew it was all bunk), to illustrate exactly what he means by "Idiot America":

The successful sale of the Iraq war was a pure product of Idiot America. But Idiot America is a collaborative effort, the results of millions of decisions made and not made, to reduce everything to salesmanship. Debate becomes corrupted argument, in which every point of view is just another product, no better or worse than all the others, and informed citizenship is abandoned to the marketplace. Idiot America is the develtopment of the collective Gut at the expense of the collective mind. It's what results when we abandon our duty to treat the ridiculous with ridicule. It's what results when politicians make ridiculous statements and we not only surrender our right to punish them at the polls but also become too timit to pinish their ideas with daily scorn--because the polls say those ideas are popular, and therefore they must hold some sort of truth, which we should respect.

Stuff

2009-06-23T22:08:00.004-06:00

On my mind this evening:

We hit the triple digits today, temperature wise. Believe it or not, these are records for the New Orleans area. A number of streets (including the interstate east of us) have buckled from the heat.
On top of this, we haven't gotten rain in about a month. Our garden is just about dead, and the farmer's market is full of signs that the booth occupant has no produce due to the drought.
I'm simultaneously sad and gleeful. Kevin leaves next Friday for a month in Vienna for a study abroad program. I don't want to be without him for that long, particularly since I pretty much lose him once school starts. However, I will be joining him after he finishes for a week driving around southern Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. I will probably blog our trip, assuming he lets me use his laptop.
Our tentative plan involves me picking up a rental car in Frankfurt and driving to Munich to meet up with Kevin. This is the scariest part of the trip to me, even though the Germans drive on the same side of the road as the U.S.
Went to WV for a 3-day weekend. Discovered that my own brother is one of those idiots who texts while he drives. I'm glad I went, because it seemed to mean a lot to my grandmother that I made it to her little family cookout, especially since my uncle didn't show after telling her he would.
Seriously sprained my pinky toe falling down the back steps. Haven't been to the gym since, so I've backslidden in my work on the Couch to 5K.
Signed up for a German class via LSU's Independent and Distance Learning program. May also meet with a tutor to work on my skills prior to going to Germany.
In a moment of insanity, I also joined an adult kickball league. I figured it's socialization, it's exercise, and it's outdoors, but I'm really scared to death. I am so not the athletic type, and I still have nightmares about middle school gym class.
Animals all good, except when they're not. Tristan may be seeing a vet specializing in aggression issues, Mischa is having eye surgery this week, and Cali is far too thin for my tastes.

Gute nacht. Ich muss schlafen.

Summer Reading Program Book #4

2009-06-22T19:39:00.002-06:00

Such a Pretty Fat, by Jen Lancaster

OK, this one had me from the first two pages. It is simply not in my nature to turn away from an author who is owned by a pit bull named Maisy the Love Monster. Subtitled "One Narcissist's Quest To Discover if Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, Or Why Pie is Not The Answer," this book is a hilarious look through the joys of weight loss, which for the author ended up in a deeper reassessment of the way she conducted her life. Cool stuff.

As a teaser, here's a promo clip Lancaster did for BookTV:

Big Bad Baby Blanket, Green Edition

2009-06-22T19:23:00.003-06:00

At long last, I finished the baby blanket I was doing in Knit Picks's Shine Worsted, in Mallard. It turned out beautifully, although I need to get a better handle on joining yarn at the ends, particularly when there isn't an inside and outside to the piece. The yarn was soft to work with, will be washable (a priority when its intended user is a creature without control of its innards), and didn't fuzz up much. And I loved the color so much (I feel sorry for babies stuck with pastels) that I used the remainder to knit a second baby blanket for a different procreator in my life.

Summer Reading Program Book #3

2009-06-17T18:49:00.003-06:00

The God Virus, by Darrel W. Ray

Written by an educational psychologist, The God Virus uses the virus metaphor to great effect in describing how religions reproduce themselves, impact their "hosts," and affects the world around them. Treating religion as an organic entity provides a fresh perspective in demonstrating the psychology behind how and why religions propogate. Without the vitriol that many other authors have sent toward the religious, Ray addresses a variety of topics I've not seen addressed before, such as having a conversation with the "infected" that kindly focuses on the person and not the religion. At just over 200 pages and with fairly clear language, the book is a quick read. I found myself turning the pages, wanting to see where he was going to go next with it. Based on some of the end chapters, I'd like to see the author use his expertise to address the issue of recovery from the virus.

Being honest with myself

2009-06-14T10:09:00.002-06:00

Despite all of the guilt I have about not living near my family, reading the local newspaper makes me glad I left.

Summer Reading Program Book #2

2009-06-08T19:06:00.002-06:00

The Dogs of Riga, by Henning Mankell

The second in Mankell's Kurt Wallander series (recently made even more popular by a BBC/PBS production starring Kenneth Branaugh) begins with two dead bodies in a life raft and ends with a surprise reveal. Most of the book takes place away from Wallander's native Sweden in the (for him) wholly unfamiliar backdrop of Riga, Latvia. At the time of the story, Latvia is still under the control of the Soviet Union but is pushing for independence, which adds to the "normal" levels of paranoia and justified fear in a country where eyes and ears are everywhere. The plot moves along slowly, in and out of the fog, as Wallander thinks he gets close to a murderer but then realizes he's in a blind alley. I like this very flawed detective, who causes as much trouble for himself (falling in love with a recent widow?) as the criminals do.

Summer Reading Program Book #1

2009-05-30T11:39:00.002-06:00

Dead and Gone, by Charlaine Harris

The latest in the Sookie Stackhouse series, now made famous by the HBO series "True Blood," D&G includes the elements seen in so many of the prior Sookie books: a mysterious death, tension between various supe factions as well as between Sookie and the men in her life, humor, and steamy supernatural sex. That is the good and the bad of this novel. It's good, because it makes this a fun and familiar ride. It's bad, because after 9 books, I'm starting to wish that our heroine would be allowed some peace in her life without the constant danger as well as get her love life straightened out (personally, I'm rooting for a nice Sookie-Bill-Eric triad).

Summer Reading Program 2009!

2009-05-18T18:48:00.002-06:00

It's almost that time of year again. This year I'll be posting my reviews for the annual SRP coordinated by a librarian friend of mine, which will run between May 23 (can you believe it's almost Memorial Day!) and August 15. This year my goal is to read 10 books; one of them must be either Northganger Abbey or Mansfield Park.

If you want to participate (especially if you're on GoodReads), let me know and I'll pass along contact info. The more, the merrier.

Jazz Fest summary

2009-05-14T22:45:00.004-06:00

Consumed: Indian fry bread, Vietnamese beef with vermicelli, bread pudding, rose mint tea, and a strawberry snowball, not necessarily in that order.

Seen and heard: Two blues groups, including some sort of all-star tribute, a jazz ensemble from South Africa, Bon Jovi (just heard, as I was to the side of the stage because I don't do crowds), musicians from Benin, Mardi Gras Indians, local marching club, and Native American (Tuscarora) dancers. Also, lots of interesting outfits (including the ice cream swirl straw hat seen below), plenty of skin, and people enjoying themselves.

Pieces of [my] April

2009-05-05T22:36:00.002-06:00

Just realized it's been almost a full month since I've posted anything here, so I thought I'd do some quick catching up. Suffice it to say that April was a bitch, and not in the happy mama dog way. Workwise, April is our crunch time, and I spent the month trying to wrap up two projects while doing enough work on my other projects to keep the natives quiet. Both projects are now off my desk, so I can sit back and breathe for a minute before tackling the ever-mounting pile of projects I've been ignoring. But my point was that work kept me so tired, physically and psychically, that I pretty much crashed every day when I got home. Hence, stringing words together here was beyond me. I did have a fun month though in some respects.

* Early on, my friend Brian came to visit for a few days, his first trip to NOLA since the Sugar Bowl visit in college. We had a good time catching up, visiting restaurants, and touring the town. I also took a day off from work to play tourist. In addition to the mandatory visit to Cafe du Monde, we went to the Southern Food and Beverage Museum, which provided lots of info about "native" New Orleans foods like po' boys, red beans and rice, chicory coffee, and jambalaya. There was also an exhibit on Elvis and food. For lunch, we tried Bennachin, featuring the food of West/Central Africa, which was terrific. Now I owe him a trip to Minneapolis, which sounds like a wonderful respite from the August humidity.

* I finally made it to a practice session and concert for the Crescent City Wind Symphony, one of the local community ensembles. They only do 2 rehearsals before the concert and actually sight read a piece at the concert itself. Many of the other players are music teachers/professors or students, so in that respect I definitely felt outclassed, but for someone who hasn't played her flute on a daily basis in 20 years (yes, it's been just about that long since I finished high school), I did pretty damn well.

* Drove 300 miles to Birmingham to see Wicked with my friend Kelly in Tuscaloosa. She introduced me to a terrific barbecue place (where I had a chocolate cream pie to die for), the famous Alabama stadium, and the Vulcan, whose bum is the first think you see coming out of the observation deck elevator. That was probably the first time since moving to NOLA that I've been somewhere with hills. I'd forgotten that the Appalachians actually begin in Alabama. I've missed the views you see. The musical was incredible, and I got quite a shock because it ends differently than the book. The ending is happier, which made me glad, though I do believe it takes away somewhat from the point of the book.

* I bought an iPod Touch because my dog-chewed, sad little Nano finally died. I wanted more of the PDA-type features than I did the ability to Twitter while I'm on the can (see the recent Doonesbury story arch to get the reference). So far I adore it.

Other than that, I seem to have slept a lot, knitted a good bit, gardened (you should see the bean plants now -- they're blooming), read, and hung out with the dogs. Can't think of a damn other thing of interest I did.

Happy Anniversary to Me!

2009-04-08T22:52:00.002-06:00

Last week marked one year since I arrived in New Orleans, and yesterday was my one-year anniversary at work. My immediate supervisor and her boss both sent very sweet cards, and my supervisor even bought me a little gift. They have both been so helpful and so welcoming, not just in terms of work issues but in relocation in general. I got a terrific performance eval at work, which boosted my self-confidence a great deal. (My Debbie Downer side is always wondering if I'm on the verge of being fired.) Meanwhile, I'm getting all introspective on the good and the bad of the past year. I'll share some thoughts when I'm not exhausted.

In other news, another job opportunity may be on the horizon, this one in-house in the medical library. Apparently, TPTB have decided to fill an open position (which, in this economy, isn't always a given -- I think every time someone leaves a position, no matter what the employer, there's a great deal of review and consideration about whether the job can be eliminated).

Also, it looks like dog poop lady across the street may be leaving. Her house is up for sale, it seems. I feel bad for her, because she's not in good health, but at the same time I'm a little relieved considering that we don't have the best neighborly relations. Who knows, maybe all the tenants will be staying?

One more day this work week (despite working for a secular institution, all the offices are closed for Good Friday), and then a long weekend. I'm in desperate need, because in addition to a busy spell at the office, I've also been battling allergies for the past couple weeks. (I've been living on Ricola and Sudafed.) Unfortunately, much of the weekend will be spent getting our taxes together. They'll probably hear the screaming in Baton Rouge.

Book on my mind

2009-04-06T21:27:00.002-06:00

Today, I finished Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason after nearly a year of reading it off and on. The book, which deals with the rise of anti-intellectualism in the United States and picks up where Hofstadter's Pulitzer-winning Anti-Intellectualism in American Life left off, wasn't too dense a read. I just found the topic of how, to borrow a phrase, the United States is amusing itself to death a wee bit depressing, and I don't need anything else to make me feel hopeless. But it really is a terrific book that will change your perspective on the world and people around you. One particular passage encapsulated and exemplified exactly what she was talking about:

What might help alert the public to the deeper significance of our nation's intellectual shortcomings? Real political leadership, comparable to Franklin Roosevelt's effort to educate Americans in the late 1930s about their stake in the future of Europe and the threat posed by Nazism, could take advantage of the public anger about the war in Iraq to make this a truly teachable moment instead of a simple repudiation of a failed policy. But it would take awesome courage for a candidate to say to voters: "The problem isn't just that you were lied to. The real problem is that we, as a people, have become too lazy to learn what we need to know to make sound public decisions. The problem is that two-thirds of us can't find Iraq on a map, and many members of Congress don't know a Shiite from a Sunni. The problem is that the public doesn't know enough or care enough about culture to be outraged when a United States secretary of defense, informed that some of the oldest artifacts of Western civilization are being looted from a Baghdad museum on our watch, says dismissively, 'Stuff happens.' The problem is that most of us don't bother to read newspapers or even watch the news on television. Our own ignorance is our worst enemy." [bolding mine] It is so much easier, so much safer politically, to simply say, "You were the victims of a lie," than to suggest that both voters and their elected representatives, in both parties, must shoulder much of the blame for their willingness to be deceived.

My first socks

2009-03-29T12:39:00.002-06:00

These were done on two circulars using a pattern based on the Socks Soar book by Cat Bordhi. We were given the pattern in the socks class at my LYS (Garden District Needleworks). The yarn is cotton; can't remember what brand. To do both of them took about two months, knitting sporadically. (I have long feet.)

Now, I'm onto SnB's Big Bad Baby Blanket. I'm hopefully doing two of them, depending on how my yarn supply works out. I'm using a nice deep green (if I were having a baby, I'd go bonkers from all the pastels) that is a cotton/bamboo blend. It's wonderfully soft and yet machine washable.

How does our garden grow?

2009-03-29T12:18:00.006-06:00

Fairly well, considering it's not even April yet. Ms. Molly is certainly interested in what's happening on the other side of the fence. Here's hoping that neither of them decides to work on their horticultural skills.

Here we have one variety of pole beans (we did five plants for each of the beans/peas). We just planted these last week.

Here's a close-up of one of the little guys. He looks like a winner, doesn't he.

Here's our first gardenia. Already, it smells wonderful.

Farmer Kevin proudly displays his handiwork. (The mulch fabric to keep down the weeds was his idea. He also built the walkway in between to make it easier to get between the rows. In the pots on the fence are parsley and oregano.

Also coming out are the first fruits on our Meyer lemon tree. We were told that sometimes you don't get viable fruit until the second or third year. But they're very cute anyway. There are a lot of them, and we're going to pinch about half of them back to try to send more resources to the survivors. (From what we understand, leaving all of them on will provide many smaller fruits, and pinching them back will result in larger, more robust lemons.

Mash-up of my life

2009-03-26T21:01:00.003-06:00

OK, so I'm pretty sure I'm not using that in the proper Twotopian context, but I actually don't care.

To catch you up to speed on me:

# Despite our 1 a.m. arrival, our trip to CA was lovely, insofar as a memorial service can be. Seeing Kevin's family again, and meeting his grandmother for the first time, was nice. The Monterey area is gorgeous, and I regret I didn't have more time to explore (I've decided we need to vacation in CA next year, since I've only been there once and that was for work). We went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which I liked. The service itself was low-key but emotional, and I think it was exactly what Kevin needed.

# We missed the St. Patrick's Day parade here, during which cabbages, carrots, and potatoes are thrown at the spectators from the floats and marchers. Never one to turn down free food, it's a pity we missed it.

# The garden is well underway. We're using a thick silver mulch sheet on top of the plot to keep the weeds down and prevent pests, cutting holes to plant seeds. We've also got two market packs in which we're putting salad greens and butter lettuce. In addition to that, we'll have two kinds of sweet peppers, three or four types of tomato, watermelon, zucchini, pole beans, bush beans, and English peas, kohlrabi, and an herb garden. Also, it looks like we may have some lemons and tangerines this year, and there's a nice supply of catnip on the front porch. Apparently though, we have gotten a bit of a late start. Our aunt in Mississippi has 12-inch-tall tomato plants already.

# I may be returning to Libraryland. My dream job, in information literacy and instruction, came open at one of the local universities (one of the private ones not affected by Bobby "The Exorcist" Jindal's budget cuts), and so I had to take the chance and apply. They've contacted two of my references (strange thing -- maybe it's a New Orleans deal -- but this is the second employer who has contacted my reference BEFORE calling me for an interview), so there's hope. However, they do have someone part-time with this job title, so it may very well be that I'm just a shadow candidate to get around EEOC rules and this person is the shoe-in for the job. The weird side is that my boss (one of my references) now knows that I might be leaving, which is going to make my one-year review tomorrow really interesting.

# In a related note, I found out over the last few weeks that the library where I worked in Maine is closing due to budget reasons. (There's an effort underway to keep them open. If you're interested in the situation, I can send you to the relevant resources.) I feel very bad for the staff, who were given just a week's notice or so but am guiltily thankful that I left before the situation got critical.

# The spouse and I are taking a Cajun dance class, which is using muscles that don't get much play on the elliptical trainer. Thus, I've been hobbled for days after each class. It's fun but tough -- between his tendency to overanalyze everything and my inability to relinquish control of myself, we get frustrated. And then there's the whole thing about moving your feet and your arms at 150 in unison with someone else.

# We were supposed to be having a visit from my mom and brother next week (they were to fly down, which is a HUGE deal -- my mom hasn't been on a plane since she was pregnant with me). However, my mom broke her knee (or rather, the dog broke it), and so she won't be traveling for a bit. We're hoping she'll be able to come after Kevin finishes finals but before he leaves for Mexico (study abroad).

# Finally got through to the dog-poop woman across the street. What polite discussion couldn't accomplish, a plastic bag of poop hanging on her banister could. We'll see if it sticks this time.

# We haven't been out to eat much (thinking about buying a new sofa, because ours is not practical for a dog-owning household), but we did try a terrific French place recently that was reasonable, had a menu that provided a range of price levels, and provided terrific service (when Kevin compliments a waitress on her service, you know she's good): Le Crepe Nanou in the Garden District.

# I have a new time suck at work: ZooBorns

Welcome spring!

2009-03-21T11:51:00.002-06:00

For those of you whose first day of spring involved snow.

Mardi Gras season in New Orleans

2009-03-01T19:15:00.009-05:00

We have survived our first Mardi Gras season in New Orleans. A few thought, reflections, and images.

First off, Mardi Gras is generally nothing like what you see on COPS. So just get that image out of your head right now.

Mardi Gras is indeed a season here, starting at the end of the 12 days of Christmas and runs until midnight of Mardi Gras night, which marks the start of Ash Wednesday. Mardi Gras as celebrated in the U.S. was actually begun in Mobile, Alabama, and is a riff on the European (and then Caribbean) Carnival celebrations. You can use Wikipedia to get the details. Here, MG is closely tied in with "coming out" balls, and since the beginning of the year you'd find pictures of the new debutantes in each copy of the newspaper. The photos demonstrate the dichotomy of New Orleans: There were balls for white girls and there were balls for black girls, but never, ever did you find both in the same group. In fact, some of the oldest groups stopped parading because they were being forced not to discriminate.

My first taste of the season was literally that, when one of my coworkers brought along king cake to our biweekly meeting. It's pretty much a cinnamon-roll dough with icing and sugar on top and comes in various flavors. The praline gets high marks as does the plain. Because the beginning of the year also began my effort to whip my ass in shape, I avoided king cake when I could.

As time passed, the visibility of MG increased exponentially. At first, it was a few decorations on office doors at work or garlands around columns on the homes of the rich and the shameless on St. Charles. Then, you'd see beads dangling from chain-link fences, strings of lights in MG colors (green, gold, and purple), giant masks on the sides of homes. You also heard a lot of commercials on the radio for "throws" (the beads and other cheap paraphernalia tossed during the parades, for which members of the parading organizations have to purchase themselves), king cakes, banquet halls, etc.

The first parades around the area began around the beginning of February, mainly in the communities outside the metro area. But they came up in conversation a lot, in terms of attendance and avoidance. Parades can, and do, close down major thoroughfares for entire days, so if you need to be somewhere on parade days, it takes planning. As an example, my knitting group didn't meet last Saturday because one of the "super krewes," Endymion, for which people began sitting out to save their viewing spots 2 days in advance, passed right in front of the coffee shop where we meet. Because I live away from the main parade routes (and because most of the big parades have been forced out of the neighborhoods onto those main routes), I didn't have many problems, although I postponed some necessary trips to the mall. On MG day, most offices, gyms, and businesses other than restaurants are closed because it is so hard to get around. We were rather surprised, however, to find that even the postal service is closed that day.

The first parade we attended was the Mystic Krewe of Barkus, the dog krewe. (Human escorts are allowed, and indeed, required, though.) The king and queen of the krewe are always rescues, and the event raises funds for the Animal Rescue League and other groups. Before the event is a big party with music, booths from local shops and organizations, and music, in the park where the parade starts, just north of the French Quarter. We took Molly and Tristan, but left Mischa at home because she's so small. Tristan was a bit overwhelmed by everything, although he only got ugly with one dog. Molly, meanwhile, had a fabulous time and just wanted to see everything and sniff everyone. We garnered several bags of kibble samples to use as treats, a poop-bag holder, and a variety of other things for free. We skipped costumes for the dogs, though Molly was wearing a lovely strand of teal beads.

There are also local krewes that parade around the neighborhood. Ours is Krewe of O.A.K., which parades from bar to bar in the Riverbend/Carrollton area, my 'hood. Walking the Friday night before M.G., they always start and end at the Maple Leaf Bar. Among the regular marchers are a group called the Krewe of the Rolling Elvi, the Pussyfooters (of which our realtor is a founding member), and the Bearded Oysters. O.A.K. was neat because it's local, so we recognized participants and spectators, including an elderly woman I know from the dog park. However, because I was in the bathroom when the parade took off, I actually missed seeing the total congregation. Best costumes of the night had to have been the two friends who came dressed as Michael Phelps (on a box of Wheaties) and his bong. Never have I seen such a creative use of cardboard, tinfoil, and a shower curtain.

We also went to Bacchus, one of the super-krewes. Thanks to a friend, we had front-row seats. (Her work, my hair salon, rents a balcony on St. Charles every year, and employees can invite friends and family.) King Bacchus this year was Val Kilmer (Bacchus and Endymion are two of the only krewes to crown a nonmember as king). The scooter made travel that day fairly painless, as we could squeeze past traffic and park much closer to where we needed to be than anyone in a car could (this was good, because I was wearing cute leather boots that weren't made for urban hiking).

We arrived close to the parade start time, but because the start was a couple miles away, it didn't reach us until an hour later. (Hint for anyone attending MG in the future: When you start seeing the Entergy trucks and the police, the parade has started.) We took advantage of the cash bar to get some Irish coffees, because it was more than a bit nippy, especially once the sun went down. I was bundled in two shawls (wearing my MG shirt underneath), but the spouse was all pirated up in a fairly thin shirt. Luckily, he had the presence of mind to layer a t-shirt under it. (Incidentally, the gorgeous woman in the pic with me is Laura, our hostess.)

Because of higher vantage point on the balcony, we were sort of a target for the large floats because they could throw beads up at us rather than down toward the folks at street level. I started out the evening by catching a bag of beads thrown by King Bacchus himself, which were promptly shared with everyone else on the balcony.

The parade included the big floats interspersed between high school marching bands, local dignitaries, and the Flambeauxs. Useful knowledge: You're supposed to throw coins at the Flambeauxs. The bands all made my feet hurt, because they march in that exaggerated HBCU style. Plus, their twirlers and flag corps folks all had taps on their boots, which are a bitch to march in.

Like most parades, there was a lot of hurry-up-and-wait involved, which sometimes meant that a float was in front of us for 5 minutes or more.

As the evening progressed, I was amazed to see how into my non-sporting guy got into bead catching. In part because of our prime location and in part because of his efforts, we came home with a lot of beads, including two bags that were never opened. (You can actually recycle your beads -- take them to a drop-off point, where they go to an organization for developmentally disabled adults, who sort and repackage the beads for next year.)

The parade ran about 3 hours, from the time it hit our viewing spot to until the last few floats. We actually left just a few minutes early, to try to beat the crowds. We did a tolerable job, because we had just hopped on the scooter as the parade ended. It took us about 20 minutes to get home (normally it would have taken 10). We had to deal with angry dogs, whose dinner was 2 hours late, and we were both bone-weary, but we had a blast.

We missed all of the Tuesday parades because we slept in, but we got to experience a bit of it by checking out the costumes of our fellow diners at the Vietnamese place down the street, later that evening. Perhaps next year we'll make it for the big celebration in the Quarter. (We are told that it's one of those things you should experience at least once and then you don't have to do it again, much like the 4th of July on the Mall in D.C.) I'll have to start pondering costume options now.

Good eats

2009-02-13T11:19:00.003-05:00

After a rough day in the salt mines last week, I made the spouse go out for dinner. We decided to try a fairly new place next door to the dog supply store: LaMacarena. I haven't eaten pupusas since we left D.C. The traditional pork pupusas I had were very tasty, and I liked the pickled cabbage they came with (I'm a sucker for sour foods), but Kevin thought the slaw was a little strong to be on its own. The fried plantains were delicious but cold. And the black beans had a great flavor, although the presence of loads of onions meant I picked my way through them.

Other than that, we really haven't been out anywhere new lately. Kev is ass-deep in classwork, and I've just been denning in the evenings. With Mardi Gras coming up, we're hoping to get out a bit more -- There's a BBQ place up on Oak we've been meaning to try, we have got to start exploring the Marigny and Mid-City, and all I want for Valentine's Day is a place to shoot pool.

Rest in peace, Jeff

2009-01-31T22:25:00.003-05:00

One week ago today, we lost Kevin's father after a 16-month battle with a brain tumor. He was only 59. This was taken the day they arrived in Maine with our worldly possessions. It's one of my favorite pictures of the two of them together.

Just because I was so crabby earlier

2009-01-28T23:28:00.003-05:00

A little happiness: As I type this, the Spouse and I are taking a break from planning our summer garden. Well, it will mainly be my summer garden, as he will hopefully be spending a month in a study abroad program in Mexico. But anyway, I am very excited. I come from gardening people, and the chance to grow more than a pot of tomatoes here and a container of basil there makes me very happy. Our garden space is only about 4' x 8', but we're organizing it to get the maximum usage. Also, we're thinking about moving upward, to grow lettuces on the room of the laundry shed.

If we start our seeds soon, we can start planting come March.

In which our author rants a bit

2009-01-28T22:30:00.002-05:00

Because I need to spew forth as I've just been in one of those moods:

If you're an adult with a child of your own, you still have to call your mother eight or more times in a 5-hour period, and this happens on a daily basis, perhaps you should consider therapy.
Styrofoam: Why is anyone in a first-world nation still using this stuff? Oops, I forgot: Louisiana isn't a first-world nation.
I want a snow day too. *pouts*
The people who send death threats to Sir David Attenborough because he dares to talk about science need to have a baseball ball taken to their heads. They make me wish I could snap my fingers and make religion disappear. Unfortunately, that wouldn't do anything for stupidity.
You're in a job where you deal with the public whether you like it or not. Do you think you could at least pretend to not hate everyone standing in front of you?
A person should not have to make 5 phone calls over the course of 2 weeks just to get a question answered by their medical provider or make an appointment.
My husband's father was taken from him just when they were getting to know each other as adults.

The Year Ahead

2009-01-14T22:24:00.002-05:00

A few of my hopes and goals for 2009:

Continue working on my German and Spanish on a regular basis.
Work out regularly and eat more vegetables, with the ultimate goal of losing 23 lbs.
Join a local ensemble so I can play my flute regularly with other people.
Read at least 50 books.
Deal with some medical issues I've been avoiding.

The Year in Review

2009-01-14T22:13:00.003-05:00

All in all, it's been a productive year. In summary:

I survived my second Maine winter without stabbing myself.
I got a tattoo.
I found a full-time position despite being hundreds of miles away at the time.
I bought a Mac and love it!
We bought our first home together (well, sort of together: the spouse brought my credit score down, so the mortgage had to be in my name only, but then I immediately put him on the title for the house).
I moved 1,630 miles with a very angry cat and a fully packed Prius.
I went to JazzFest.
I began taking private flute lessons for the first time in my life.
I joined a gym.
I survived my first semester as a law student's wife.
I read more than 40 books over the year (fewer than my goal but still not bad).

Earworm tag

2008-12-27T19:09:00.000-05:00

This has been stuck in my head for the past week. Enjoy.

Holiday Tidbits

2008-12-22T23:10:00.004-05:00

I'm splitting the difference between the Winter Solstice and Christmas. Here in the Black Pearl, we have been busily been preparing for the holidays and for winter in general. The Spouse completed his first semester of law school after a grueling three weeks before and including finals, in which we probably spoke about 5 sentences a day. After sleeping for 2 days straight, he has jumped right in to completing some lingering woodworking projects and a couple the suddenly arose. In the latter category, the porch swing started to pull out of the ceiling(!). It turned out that maximum weight for the chain that had been used was about 1/2 of what it was getting on a regular basis. So, Kev built some sort of contraption to bolt into the support beams in the ceiling to disburse the weight and got more heavy duty, better quality chains. He's also building a couple small end tables for the swing.

As often happens when the temps get colder, we have been busy in the kitchen squirreling away meals. Prior to finals, Kevin built up a supply of chili and lentil soup (which was terrific, with a nice lemony curry flavor) in the freezers. Meanwhile, I was feeling sorry for the three young women next door who didn't have a wife to get them through finals week. Thus, while I was making us a lasagne one weekend, I made them one as well. I also made a vegetarian lasagne for a Solstice potluck last night. I think I might be all lasagne'd out for a while. Since finishing finals, Kevin has also supplied us with jambalaya and beef bourguignon

Christmas gifts are all purchased, more or less. I still need to buy something for my gram (I'm thinking a warm throw for her sofa), and I must mail what is going to be the niecelet's late Christmas/early birthday gift. We will be heading to Mississippi for the holidays. At some point before the spring semester starts, Kevin will be making a trek to Richmond, but he's still looking at trip dates.

As we have been writing Christmas cards, we've been reflecting on what a pretty good year it's been. We have moved to a terrific city, we own a lovely home, I have interesting and stimulating work, Kevin has survived his first semester of law school, our family members' health is better than expected, and we made it through one hurricane evacuation. Perhaps 2009 will be even better.

Best wishes out there to everyone over the holiday season and in the coming year!

A Christmas advertising WTH?

2008-12-11T23:40:00.004-05:00

So, a couple days ago I was bopping along in the vehicle listing to the local "today's hits!" station. On comes a commercial for some tech toy or another. The product is irrelevant. What amazed me was the tack the ad took. To paraphase, it was something like "This year, get your loved one Product X, something they will actually want, instead of something they don't want, like a cashmere sweater."

A CASHMERE SWEATER?

Since when is this a gift that most people would hate? OK, a rayon sweater with appliqued snowmen wearing Santa hats: that I could imagine tossing to the back of the closet, never to see it again. But cashmere? If someone is shelling out the money for a cashmere sweater (e.g., Land's End's value cashmere sweaters start at $70), it means that A: they have taste, and B: they think you're worth the expense and deserve classy things. A cashmere sweater is a classic piece that you can wear forever, assuming that moths, the dog, or the dryer don't get it first. It is soft, lightweight, and comforting. What kind of crackhead would categorize cashmere as a gift that no one really wants? People who collect Precious Moments figurines and Thomas Kinkade prints? College grads who can text all day but can't carry a conversation? For the love of God, who are these people and how can I avoid them!?

Whew, OK, rant over.

For the record, I prefer V-necks and sweater sets, and I wear a large, in case you want to show your cashmere love.

Prop 8: The Musical

2008-12-03T21:20:00.001-05:00

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Thanksgiving

2008-12-02T22:40:00.003-05:00

The summary, in no particular order:

United is dead to me. It's like they give their counter agent candidates an intelligence test and then pick the people with the lowest scores.
Next time I'm doing what I've wanted to do all along: fly into PIT and rent a car to drive to WV. At least during the months when weather is most likely to disrupt flight traffic.
Had a great Thanksgiving Day with the family. Turkey and the trimmings were just what I needed in terms of comfort food. It wasn't particularly interesting fare, but it was home.
The niecelet is growing tall and has quite the spirit. She loves flashlights, strawberries, and talking. She does not like leaving. But she reminded me why I'm sticking to furkids: 15 minutes with her made me tired and looking for the duct tape.
Met up with some friends from high school, including one person I hadn't seen since I was in her wedding more than 15 years ago. She looks great and is much the same, personality wise. And I had forgotten that anyone ever called me Rita Chiquita.
I missed my family here immensely. I wish I could find an alternative to traveling by myself.
I am very glad I didn't go to Pittsburgh for the Backyard Brawl after all. Cold temps (even if it is sunny) and a loss do not mix well.
We spent several hours driving around on Saturday, and I found neither red shoes nor brown short boots that I liked.
Met the new dog in my parents' life, who moved in one day (seriously: He showed up in the yard playing with Harley. After being put outside the fence, he not only came right back in, but while a parent was trying to get Harley in the house while leaving the stranger outside, he ran into the house and immediately jumped up onto the couch.) He's sort of like a brown beagle, with perhaps some dachsund and corgi in him. Absolutely adorable.
Is there anything that says more about America than a part-time immigrant worker being trampled by a mob trying to get to sale items that don't exist in a Wal-Mart?

Think of the possibilities

2008-12-02T22:33:00.002-05:00

With a nice licorice umbilical cord and a placenta made of white chocolate with food coloring, you'd have the perfect snack for your Right to Forced Birth party!

Meet the Satsuma

2008-11-26T23:35:00.004-05:00

This lovely citrus and I made our acquaintance a couple weeks ago, after a discussion with someone singing their praises and after seeing a guy selling them off the back of a truck for 3 weekends in a row on St. Charles. If you're not in the Deep South, you're unlikely to find these little gems in your local grocery store. Because of the biochemistry of their skins, which makes them a snap to peel, they're delicate and not suited to long-distance travel. Right now, they're lovely and sweet, and they have very few seeds. Some people, though, prefer them at the point in the season when they're more tart. If you ever get a chance, pick some up.

In other culinary realms, I ate fennel for the first time this past week. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it tasted neither like onion nor like licorice. The arugula is about ready to harvest, and I have one tiny broccoli head coming in. On election night, I fed several hungry law students, who generally seemed rather stunned to find real food at a party instead of just chips and booze-soaked fruit. I did two quiches, a pickle tray, spreads and brie with bread, and cookies. We tried what is billed as New Orleans' best BBQ, and I'll admit it was pretty damn good. I'm still trying to decide whether to make baked goods for everyone for Christmas, although I have a couple recipes I must try. But I do plan to make lasagnes for all my favorite law students, to get them through finals week. Tomorrow, I'm heading home for a turkey and ham extravaganza with all of the traditional fixings.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Sing it, sister

2008-11-16T10:39:00.000-05:00

She makes a good point.

In case you missed this

2008-11-12T00:40:00.002-05:00

Keith Olbermann hits the nail on the head.

Good eats

2008-11-09T22:51:00.003-05:00

Now that we've been here for a while and law school demands have filled up Kevin's schedule, we haven't been eating out as much as we did over the summer. But here are a few memorable places:

Vietnamese goodness at the Jazmine Cafe. Yes, that spelling makes my head hurt. But the food at this place is delicious and cheap. From what I hear, it's the best Vietnamese in the downtown/Uptown area. The east side of the city, out to where Kevin's uncle lives, has a relatively large Vietnamese community, including a local version of Eden Center, where Kevin has gotten some good pho, and there's a great bakery/restaurant that is always packed. But I digress. The food here was all fresh, flavorful, and well-balanced (cucumbers with spicyness, pickled cabbage with meats). I'm very glad this place is a 2-minute drive.
Amazing birthday dinner at Jacques-Imo's. In all of the travel literature about the Riverbend, this place gets recommendations. We finally got to try it on my birthday, and the meal was so good I was spent afterward. It's deceiving: When you enter the front door, it looks like you're in a typical dive bar. At first, Kevin was worried that I might want to go to a fancier place to celebrate me being old and dried up. The seating is all in the back room, and you have to go through the kitchen to get to it. Among the items we tried: the crawfish and alligator sausage cheesecake, fried green tomatoes with shrimp remoulade, fried chicken, grilled quail, and bread pudding. It was all incredible. A word of warning, though: the appetizers are big enough to serve as an entree, so if the cost of the entrees scare you (not that they're outrageous for the gourmet Creole/Cajun you're getting), maybe you can do a sort of tapas and share the bounty.
S0-so Italian. For our anniversary, we went to one of those places that has been around forever and you can't exactly understand why. OK, the signature barbecued shrimp were good, as was the pasta and meatballs (I was having a traditionalist sort of night), but they weren't great. And I'm irked with myself for having squandered one of my special occasion restaurant visits for at least a couple months (maybe I can convince Kevin that we really need to do something special once the semester is over, if he's still conscious.

Things I have seen

2008-11-09T22:35:00.004-05:00

In the past month . . .

An antique fire engine, driving on a city street at 8:15 on a weekday morning.
A little blonde girl with a black unibrow, being harangued by her presumed mother over her pronunciation of a word.
Three prepubescent Sarah Palins, in business suits, upsweeps, pageant sashes, and tiaras.
An elementary school drawing signed by someone named Nastr (right next to that was one by Eryn).
A Jack Russell terrier, trying to have his way with my 60-pound golden boy.
A nutria, up close and personal in a state park. Glad I had a local with me, or else I would have thought it a gigantic rat refugee from New Orleans.
A group of law students gleeful at the sight of a homemade quiche.
History being made.

Knitting accomplishments

2008-11-08T20:42:00.006-05:00

This was my major project over the summer. It's a raglan cardigan in cotton yarn, in a pattern from the summer Rowan tweed catalog. Texture-wise, it's very interesting because the purl side is out. This is the first sweater I've done since my very first knitting project and was relatively painless.

The headband was just a quick something done from novelty yarn from the gigantic stash (seriously, think a contractor-size garbage bag full of yarn) I inherited from Kevin's mother that I only recently obtained from Kev's aunt, also a knitter. It's a simple drop-stitch, with tapered ends and a tail long enough to tie under my hair. Now I just need to buy some work clothes to match it.

Oh, and there was also a scarf made of variegated ribbon yarn, to match a linen outfit I have, but I look so horrible in the outfit (think cinnamon-colored potato), that I'll forego a picture.

Halloween in New Orleans

2008-11-08T19:50:00.006-05:00

Time to play catch-up again. The Sunday before Halloween, I went with a spiritual group and toured some of the historically creepy sites around downtown New Orleans. Here are a few highlights:

OK, this guy isn't creepy at all. He was rather adorable, hanging on his balcony, enjoying the sunshine. But he does live next to a Voodoo shop (a place where Voodoo practitioners can buy their supplies, not just a place that sells witchcrap to tourists).

This building is referred to as the Gray (Grey?) Ghost and is supposedly one of the most haunted buildings in New Orleans. Depending on who you talk to, the stories involve murder, unrequited love, torture, and medical experimentation on people who are still alive.

The rest of the photos are all from St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, just north of the French Quarter. It was opened in the time of Spanish rule over New Orleans, so there are many incredibly old headstones and crypts. As for this one, I just liked this tombstone and the detailed message about a young Englishman who came to the United States courtesy of a "disinterested patron" and died of yellow fever.

Not sure what this obelisk was all about, but it was striking compared to the worn masonry found elsewhere.

Looking across the Protestant section of the cemetery toward the Iberville projects.

More neat stones, this one deadicated (hee, dead-icated) to a drowning victim. A lot of the stones were originally on the crypts, but as they fell off due to time, the elements, and vandalism, they were placed in these stone settings in the ground.

Famous dude, in the Protestant section.

This was probably the tallest monument in the cemetery.

Namesake of Millaudon Street? I don't know.

The reputed grave of Marie Laveau, Voodoo practitioner. Per custom, I brought her some sparkly jewelry (rhinestones from a wedding I was in years ago) and gave her some pennies.

The crypt of the Morials, a famous NO political family. Some of you might recognize the name: the convention center (where ALA was held in 2006) is named after one of them.

Best DU thread in ages

2008-10-17T18:29:00.003-05:00

Warning: Do not open if you are trying to eat or drink anything, or if you have a full bladder.

The best part is that the picture used was an actual image from the debates on Wednesday night:

Well, that answers that question

2008-10-14T23:49:00.004-05:00

About whether -- should I crack open my skull or otherwise lose my ever-loving mind, I might go back to public library work at some point in the future: My local NOPL branch had some fliers about positions open within the system (or rather, they're creating an applicant pool should positions come open at some point in the future). I discovered that a Librarian I position, requiring an MLS, would mean an income drop of 1/4 of my current salary. There's no way in hell we could survive on that unless we started pimping out Molly to big dogs who like to lick.

But at least I don't have to wonder now. I might try to volunteer, since heaven only knows what sort of applicants they're going to get with that salary.

In an unrelated note, I was surprised to find a street in Metairie named after Melvil Dewey.

Pretty pictures

2008-10-13T21:31:00.004-05:00

A couple months ago, we planted two climbing roses on either corner of the porch, which will eventually grow up to the porch level and onto the corner supports, which make a natural trellis. It's a variety (Royal Sunset) that blooms on an ongoing basis. This is it's latest offering.

And here we have two of the most spoiled puppers on the planet. I'll give you one guess as to whom that pillow belongs. (It's OK, Molly's usually on Kevin's whenever he's not there.)

Long Time Gone

2008-10-12T22:29:00.002-05:00

For at least three weeks, I have been composing a mental list of things to mention on the blog, but I was a lazy wretch and didn't get to it. It's not entirely my fault, though. After Gustav went through, I caught the cold Kevin had during our involuntary vacation and was pretty useless for at least a week after. (Thank heaven for an understanding boss (who had the same thing during and after the storm), who told me to "work at home" and rest when I needed. So, here's what I can remember from my mental musings. I may add as things occur to me.

* The furkids and I had our first weekend alone shortly after the storm, when Kevin flew up to Richmond to visit his father. It was a bit lonely, but Tristan kept an extra vigilant ear on things, so I was sure that no ax murderers would be sneaking up on the house. And being able to spread out across the bed and sleep without earplugs was nice.

* Kevin is starting to feel piled under with school work, and I have to keep remembering the wise words of a former coworker, who said in reference to being the partner of a law student: "Remember, it's not you."

* In a strange way, I'm thankful for coming from two places known for crazy politics (e.g., places that could reelect folks like Arch Moore and Marion Barry). Otherwise, I might be a whole lotta afraid that I live in a place that could re-elect a guy who is about to become a convicted criminal (i.e., Bill "Money in the Freezer" Jefferson).

* Clothing that includes writing on the rear should just end now.

* Haven't tried any new restaurants as of late, except for a very unmemorable meal at a place just across the street from the Riverwalk.

* I came *that* close to buying the Niecelet a mini-Vespa. It was sooo cute.

* Spent a Saturday night at Oktoberfest a couple weeks ago. It involved some good beer on draft, a fresh handmade pretzel, and a band whose repertoire ranged from folks songs to the theme from "Hogan's Heroes." I am not kidding.

* Speaking of bands, now that my music lessons have gotten me to a point where I can remember how to play, I might join one of the community ensembles for the terminally mediocre.

* The dogs had their first vet visit here. We really like the vet's office and how they dealt with us. Tristan is a bit underweight, so we're trying him on a higher fat kibble to see if he can bulk up. Molly's ears need to be cleaned more often here because of the humidity. It was interesting to discover, however, that ticks and Lyme are hardly ever a problem here. We truly are in a different world here.

* I got my arugula and beet plants thinned out yesterday, and I have a bloom or two on my tomatoes. I'm wondering if the reason the tomatoes aren't doing better is because there aren't many bees to pollinate this time of year. Which scares me, because if estimates about bee loss are even close to correct, what does that mean for the future of agriculture?

* Saw Religulous last night. It didn't do a lot for me. If you like Bill Maher and his style of humor, you'll be good. But I don't do confrontation well, although any movie that involves a Mel Brooks clip can't be all bad.

* Next week Kevin and I are starting a 5-week Cajun dance class, to give us a chance to spend quality time together that doesn't involve talk of Contracts and Torts.

* My brain is fried. Goodnight.

If life is this highway, I'm in trouble

2008-09-20T14:39:00.002-06:00

This week I've made two trips to the vicinity of the Louis Armstrong International Airport, located in a suburb called Kenner (one to meet my friend Brian for dinner and one to drop off the spouse). In my travels, I've gotten confused each trip, but it's not my fault. Though it doesn't rise to the level of New England's "We don't do street signs because if you belonged here, you'd already know where you were going" situation, but I thought I'd share, in case any of you happen to be driving around here.

First, I've run across streets that change names as you go (you can't live in Northern Virginia and not experience that every day of your life), I've run across roads where you have to turn to continue on the street you're on rather than to go straight (hello Maine), I've seen roads where the street numbers suddenly shift. But this week I had a first: A road (Airline Highway) where the odd numbers and even numbers inexplicably switched sides of the street. I was cruising along looking for 901, hanging in the right lane because the odd numbers were on the right side of the street. After passing through a particular intersection, I noted that the right side now had all of the even numbered addresses. Was this really necessary?

My other trials and tribulations had to do with the Earhardt Expressway, which is a handy way of getting into the western suburbs as long as you realize that there's only about a 50 percent chance of getting to go in the needed direction or using the needed exit. For instance, at Deckbar Ave., you can only get on the highway heading in to town (I found this out trying to go to the gym after work). Meanwhile, coming from the airport, there is no Deckbar exit (found this out trying to get to work).

Oh, and just a tip for all you travelers: When looking at your tickets, be sure that you don't confuse your flight information when you have the same transfer point (e.g., on your flight out you go from Memphis to Pittsburgh and on your return flight from Memphis to Dallas). You might spend an hour and a half at the wrong gate and then miss your flight because your departure gate is actually on the other end of the airport.

One last thing: I am now in love with Zapp's salt and vinegar chips.

Pondering for the night

2008-09-15T22:39:00.003-06:00

After watching a documentary about Benedict Arnold, I have to wonder how much of world history has hinged on a decision made by a penis.