the growler

January postmortem, and Rabbit, rabbit!

2012-02-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

Rabbit, rabbit, good luck in February, everyone!! In my neck of the woods, we've been tragically spoiled, living such a soft, cushy life that normal temperatures seem like unnatural punishment. Our last day of January felt like early spring.

I've become addicted to House. No, we don't still have all those channels, but I'm scurrying back and forth from the library and currently boring through season 2, so don't go telling me what happens. One thing about living almost TV free is that when I do get hooked on something, I don't have to wait for Thursday nights, or whatever. I haven't gotten to the episode pictured above, and therefore I'm very anxious about what Dr. House might have in mind for that poor cat.

In other news, I'm reading The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides, and will yammer on about that later. I will say that I'm enjoying it very much. When I'm finished with that, I'd like to finally read Gone with the Wind, especially since there's going to be an online book discussion on Good Reads--not that I can participate, since I'm not able to be there during working hours AND I'm going to be late in starting the book, anyway. It's impossible to time the reading of books just so.

We (Ekim and I) went out to dinner this evening with a few other people to celebrate the end of January. The couple who originated this remarked that this year wasn't bad at all, and when it comes to the wintertriness (is that a good word?) of January, that's certainly true. However, January is like a thirty-one day Monday for other reasons, a sort of hangover from holiday partying and spending. At work, it's the month of explaining to people that they can't cash just any check if their account is negative. The huge supermarket deposits contain dollar coins, JFK fifty cent pieces, and two dollar bills, suggestive of someone raiding the attic to pay for groceries. Bring on the tax refunds!

And so it goes, faster and faster every year. It's February now, and later this month we will celebrate our 23rd wedding anniversary. Impossible, but true...we've been married almost half our lives.

I'm about to fall asleep, what with the Hop Hog and all the sushi. Good night, and happy February!

Sugar on top

2012-01-24T18:48:00.000-08:00

If you were to google 'glass sugar container,' this image is the very first one to pop up. I have one that I use to hold straws, but that's not what I wanted to write about.

This morning, Calamity picked this very object out of the cabinet in the break room, and poked her wide-eyed face into the drive-thru where I'd been blissfully alone for a whole half-hour without her oral noise, to ask me, "Do you think this is like, salt, or sugar?"

Sigh.

Acton: Well, that is definitely a sugar container. I've never seen salt in such a large dispenser.

Calamity: Well, like........like.....like......like (on and on for what seemed like several minutes. My eyes glaze over, and I just fight annoyance with all the self-control in my possession.)

Acton: You could always sprinkle a bit onto a spoon and taste it.

Calamity: haha! That's what Attitude said. She said that like I could just like...like...like....like...

This causes me to need more coffee, and since I drink it black, I don't care what that &#* ((*#& white stuff is. I was luckier than usual today; sometimes, she pounds me with the same question until I'm ready to scream. Do you think I should call my doctor? Do you think this yogurt will be okay after an hour? Do you think my tuna helper casserole is okay in the 'frig from Saturday night?

She often reminds me of Satin Lady, both in the repetition and in the fact that she isn't even going to consider how anyone answers her questions. However, Calamity was not in special education, she had plenty of friends in school, and she's actually living with a man who treats her well--it's almost as if Satin Lady were being impersonated by a younger woman with a better life.

Oh, that reminds me--we recently got our Comcast digital adapter, to avoid losing all four of our channels when TV goes digital. We are suddenly getting about one hundred channels. Ekim called and told on us, since we don't want to pay for more service. And I'm already on a tangent. I was going to write about remote controls: we have three of them. For some reason, the Comcast remote only changes the channels, and we still need our original TV remote to actually turn the TV on and off, plus control DVDs. The third remote is for the volume, which Ekim deftly wired through our receiver, so that the sound comes out of our stereo speakers. It seems we're not alone in our tri-remote state.

Oh, and we still have all those channels, and will enjoy them until someone notices and pulls our switch, I guess. It's a sweet treat, as long as it lasts.

So. Wassup?

Death Comes to Pemberley

2012-01-21T11:12:00.000-08:00

Death Comes to Pemberley is the first book I've read by P.D. James, and I understand that it's a complete departure from anything she's ever written. That is a mighty impressive thing for a ninety-two year old author to do. It's fabulously inspiring.

However impressed I may be with the courage it took to write a mystery based on the characters of Jane Austen's beloved Pride and Prejudice, I am also a bit disappointed. This mystery novel is not compelling or fun. Jane Austen wrote social commentary, which always included some witty and humorous banter in the midst of all the seriousness, and it is this clever, lighthearted spark that is missing from this mystery.

That's not to say that it's not a smart novel; P.D. James has devised a mystery which is very appropriate for the setting and time that is also loyal to Austen's characters. My criticism is that she did not go far enough in drawing them out. There wasn't enough dialogue between the characters, not even between Darcy and Elizabeth(until the epilogue). That would have been the true challenge in capturing Austen's prose, and it seems that P.D. James avoided it.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an author in possession of a fortune of talent must be in want of Jane Austen's audience, and I do intend to read more P.D. James in the future--but in her own idiom.

Another book review

2012-01-09T15:39:00.000-08:00

Forgotten Country, by Catherine Chung, tells the story of a family of four who leave Korea during a dangerous time. Their two little girls will now live in Michigan, go to school where they will look different from everyone else, speak a different language, and even use different names. The older sister, Jeehyun, becomes Janie, and her sister Haijin becomes Hannah.

We learn about their relationship with each other, then with their extended family, especially their maternal grandmother and paternal aunt and her sons. The way they interact displays much about their culture. For instance, their father's older sister, who had to raise and take care of him, is very critical that he has just two daughters. He should insist that they keep trying for a son! This aunt also allows her own sons to act selfishly and treat their female cousins horribly. This does create horrible friction between Janie and Hannah's parents, since their mother is tired of trying for a boy.

So, Janie and Hannah grow up in the US, but constantly feel the tug of another culture. Janie is charged with forever taking care of and protecting Hannah, a duty she grows to resent, while Hannah finds the pressure of becoming someone she doesn't want to be so harsh that she simply disappears for over a year, intentionally causing her family extreme distress. During this time, Janie is under intense pressure to find her and bring her back.

When their father is diagnosed with cancer and eventually decides to go back to Korea for treatment, Janie does board a plane and reach her sister. Unfortunately, the encounter goes poorly, and the only thing Janie successfully does is convey the fact that their father has cancer and is in Korea. Worse, during a fight, Janie spitefully tells Hannah not to come; her family is finished with her.

Eventually, their mother calls Hannah, who for once answers her phone and agrees to join her family in Korea. Each sister has her own version of what took place during their last visit together, and the tension is riveting.

As their father's condition slowly deteriorates, Janie and Hannah slowly start to coexist peacefully and accept the past. They confront their parents' culture, cope with it in their own ways, and part as two independent women.

I found this to be a fascinating novel and was impressed by the range of emotion author Catherine Chung was able to convey. I actually felt Janie's indignation when she fought with Hannah, and Hannah's anger and outrage towards their aunt. Every woman in this family has had to endure injustices and indignities and the pent up angst causes them to clash spectacularly. Chung explores these women's roles and duties, as well as their resentments and jealousies, with remarkable insight. Janie's love for her father is also clearly evident. It is sad, but also an enlightening journey.

Very good read!

(This was an Early Review book from LibraryThing. Thank you!)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Okay, now I'm going to read my very first P.D. James mystery! It's called Death Comes to Pemberley, and it imagines a mystery involving Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice characters. I've got it on my Nook, and am really looking forward to it!

High on January

2012-01-05T17:32:00.000-08:00

Ah, yes, January. The after-holiday time, the month when things start to calm down again, after all that parading around in costumes, consuming nap-enducing turkey, and eating candy out of our socks. The tree is down, the ornaments put away, and most of us are back to work again.

My special work news is that Disaster will not be with us for the foreseeable future. I'll dish the scoop from just before the holidays: Disaster decided to get a boob job, or breast enhancement, but didn't seem to think she really needed to take all that much time off--she came back in about a week. Oh, Disaster...of course, she was miserable, and on vicodin, she was downright drunk. She was practically worthless. One night, when I was settling ATM, I needed her to come out to put her part of the codes into the machine, since she was the only supervisor at work during that week between Christmas and New Year's Day. She stood out there, hugging herself, and told me, "My boospies hurt...", then "Dish yous hears what I did?" When I confirmed that I had, she seemed mystified. She'd told everyone, but was now unable to remember.

She managed to assemble quite the portfolio of bad behavior during these last couple of weeks, and today our manager called us together and announced that our immediate supervisor (that's Disaster) was on FMLA. Methinks human resources had a part in this decision. At least now she'll be able to nap in her own bed, instead of sleeping face down on the table in the tiny break room, or on the floor in the drive-thru, or hiding in the vault, sitting on the floor with a bag of peanuts. Despite the fact that being without an assistant manager is going to be difficult in many ways, everyone seems to be happy that Disaster is probably gone for good. After all, her attitude was bad enough pre-boob job to be fired.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The funniest thing that happened at work lately was that one of our regular customers, an older lady, saw something with a shiny wrapper on the floor and picked it up for me to throw away. She said, "Looks like someone dropped their cold medication." The label on this little metallic package was very clear: TROJAN. Greek cold medication?

And I'm hearing squirrels on the roof. Aren't they supposed to be in bed by now, instead of playing silly games? Even if it is a mild winter so far, still.

That's all the chitchat I've got right now. What's up with you?

Behind the Beautiful Forevers, by Katherine Boo

2011-12-30T18:01:00.000-08:00

Behind the Beautiful Forevers, by Katherine Boo, takes place in Annawadi, a slum cobbled together and located across the road from an international airport and a luxury hotel. Here, in Boo's narrative nonfictional account, we meet people who must struggle for basic sustenance, live the hardest of lives, but yet are hopeful of better things in the future.

As this story unfolds, we get to know several characters and learn of their aspirations. Most of them are very hard-working and goal-oriented, performing the kind of work most of us couldn't imagine. For instance, there are many teenaged boys in Annawadi who are scavengers, collecting and sometimes selling trash that can be recycled. One of the boys we will follow is Abdul, who is a step higher than a scavenger--he appraises, sorts, and buys the trash the scavengers bring in, so he can turn around and sell the items to a recycling plant. Abdul is actually able to support his family doing this way.

Unfortunately, unforeseeable trouble lies ahead of Abdul and his family, dashing what was their most prominent dream, and this tragic, distressful subplot is a case study in judicial corruption and greed. We also follow the scavengers through their difficult and dangerous days, and watch as they form alliances and "sort-of" friendships. These boys are endearing and vulnerable, leading such precarious lives.

People die, young and old, in sad ways--those who lose hope by suicide (especially young women), some from awful infections and illness, while still others are murdered or die in accidents. Few of these deaths are deemed worthy of investigation.

How does one go on when life offers so little and the hope of anything better is so slight and can be blown away so easily? Even Asha, Annawadi's most ambitious woman, with her political dreams and the very real hope of having a college-educated daughter, has sold her soul, debased herself, and become involved in the corruption herself, but may never get out of Annawadi.

Abdul and Asha may be polar opposites in most ways, but they are both survivors. This is a fascinating study of life in a desperate place that I would recommend to absolutely anyone.

Say yes to Friday!

2011-12-30T03:14:00.000-08:00

Vacation was wonderful, the weather was as nice as anyone could possibly expect, and then we came home to the holiday season. For some reason, this holiday season wore me out. You'd think that coming back all vacationed would provide me with renewed strength and energy. I guess reality bit me hard when I got back. Christmas is fun, but it's a long day and then I have to get up bright and early the next morning and open the bank.

I used to think January sounded depressing, but I'm now looking forward to all the hoopla to be over so that I (it's all about me) can have a lazy weekend. It's high time I got more reading done, too. Not that we haven't already booked the next cruise and started planning the next merry-go-round, mind you.

Which reminds me of the rest of my life: Ennui Endurance. I've become so negative! The thing is, work is boring and my coworkers are annoying, but--I can't really leave. Even the transfer I was thinking about now seems like a very bad idea; let's just say that the situation over there calls my ennui and annoyance and raises me tension and stress. So, I stay where I am because no one is actively trying to yank my chain and so far I've gotten the days off that I've needed to have off. Not that I ask for any of the popular times, but still--not many jobs would offer me this much time off so quickly.

A good resolution for the new year would be to simply stop complaining--except for on my blog, of course, that's allowed. I mean, when other coworkers whine to me, don't whine back. It's hard; I always sympathize. And misery loves company, but I need to start spreading sunshine instead of aiding the angst.

That means an inner eye-roll when coworkers ask me questions, then don't give me a chance to get a word in edgewise. However, I can still tell Calamity not to say that she hates Asians--actually, I've already done that, and perhaps she even listened. (Calamity makes this proclamation because ONE Asian girl ONCE tried to steal one of her past boyfriends. I asked if a white girl had ever acted the same way, and she admitted that yes, this had happened. So--she hates white girls? Did I make a dent in her skull? We'll see. But she's still making fun of our Asian customers' accents. Inner eye-roll, Acton!) Anyway, this is just one of the latest examples. Ignore the ignorance, do your job, and come home!

Our assistant manager, Disaster, just came back too soon after having a boob job and has now topped her last performance in uselessness. She's trying to obtain more painkillers, and is meanwhile just working half-days, while the rest of the experienced customer service reps have off all this week. That leaves our newest--and I mean newly minted--customer service rep all by himself on the platform for hours. Without a break. See? I feel better about my job already. I can't believe they're doing this to him! The other day, he made a bunch of mistakes because there was no one to help him, so he had to call all these customers back, apologize, and in some cases tell them he needed to have them return. I'm calling him The Warrior, because I'd be in tears by now, in that position.

That's the morning pep talk!

...which in some cases, must come down. Or suspended.

Two Days

2011-12-06T03:25:00.000-08:00

Two more days of work before I get to be off on vacation! I'm excited and oh, so ready.

I got up at 5am to run this morning! Yay, I haven't been able to do that lately. It's really nice and quiet out there at 5-6am, hardly any traffic. I wish I could do this more often, but it's highly doubtful that I can sustain this sort of schedule. I'm too lazy--and a realist, not a cheerleader. But still, it feels so nice to actually be up.

It might put a happier face on these two days of work, too. I have the opening shift with Disaster. Honestly, she may be the tipping point, the factor that makes transferring to that super-close branch look like The Best Idea in the World.

But anyway--it was nice out there, actually kind of warm. And I'm up, and I've already run today.

Happy Tuesday!!

Rabbit, rabbit!

2011-12-01T04:00:00.000-08:00

Rabbit, rabbit!! Good luck in December, everyone:)

This year is on its late month, with the holiday season just about to get into full swing. Frankly, I always have mixed feelings about this, for this is a time of social angst and amplified feelings. It's probably not necessary to explain what I mean by that. This time of year can be a gauntlet; it's the challenge to not only get shopping, baking, and cards completed, but to have fun while doing so. If you start to feel harried, rushed, exhausted, or miserable, well--surely, you're not doing this right. Other people are having a great time, why aren't you?

The advent of social media may either alleviate or exacerbate these feelings. It may become clearer to some people that they are not alone in their melancholy, but then, it could also add to the suspicion that everyone else is having a better time. After all, your friends' updates are usually something of the "at the ball, danced with the prince, dining at The Ritz, having a fabulous time!" sort, instead of the "just polished off a six-pack, watching The Little Match Girl, and now I'll cry myself to sleep" kind.

And since it's the end of the year, I can't help but focus on how bored I am to still be doing the same job in the same seat I've occupied for almost four years. There's nothing very tragic or extremely sad going on, just acute ennui. And some annoyance. Thank goodness Ekim and I always go away during the middle of December, and this time, it will be very warm and sunny...I wish everyone could get away and vacation from whatever ails her.

Cheers! Here's to having the happiest possible December!

Do tell!

The Last Nude, by Ellis Avery

2011-11-19T14:06:00.000-08:00

Ellis Avery's novel The Last Nude is an imagined episode within the life of artist Tamara de Lempicka, centered around one of her most famous paintings, "La Bella Rafaela." No one now actually knows who this beautiful woman was, except for her first name.

In this novel, Rafaela Fono spent her first sixteen years in the Bronx, New York, the daughter of Italian immigrants. Her natural father dies when she is young, her mother remarries, and has three sons with her second husband. Rafaela is a teenager in high school who is also charged with household chores, caring for her little brothers, and learning her aunt and uncle's sewing trade, but when Rafaela's mother notices the way her second husband is looking at her daughter, it is suddenly time for Rafaela to get out of the picture.

So begins Rafaela's story. Accompanied by her crabby, cruel paternal grandmother, she is locked in a cabin on board a ship sailing back to Italy, where she is affianced to a nephew of her stepfather's. She doesn't get to finish high school, she doesn't want to get married at sixteen, and she barely speaks Italian. It is on one of the last nights of this voyage that Rafaela gets a chance to escape, to take control of her own life, and she seizes that opportunity, but it comes at a dangerous price.

Without spoiling too much of the story, Rafaela makes her way to Paris, where she begins to slide into prostitution, until a chance meeting with the artist Tamara De Lempicka changes her prospects. Still just seventeen, Rafaela falls in love with Tamara, and the two have an intense affair.

However, the two make good foils; Rafaela innocent and loyal, Tamara jaded and cynical. While the young Rafaela is introduced to the world of art, lavish parties, and a bohemian lifestyle, Tamara is not only painting, but using her coy charms on potential buyers to secure the best position she can for herself, while artfully keeping her young model in love and happy.

Eventually, the love affair comes to an end in a betrayal engineered by Tamara's greed and selfishness. Most of this story is narrated by Rafaela, and her pain is very real. The last few chapters are told from Tamara's point of view, when the reader gets a glimpse into the past life that has badly damaged this artist, molding her into the unlikable character of this novel. We also sympathize with her neglected daughter and all those who must put up with Tamara as she becomes an aging diva.

Ellis Avery paints a detailed 1920s Paris in this intriguing, engaging novel. Thank you for the freebie, I most certainly enjoyed it.

Joy! It's the weekend...

2011-11-18T00:00:00.000-08:00

Friday to the rescue! I am grateful for the weekend.

Finally, I've remembered to look up the answer to a question I've heard so many times. Five hundred dollar bills haven't been printed since 1945, and those had a series date of 1934. The Fed stopped circulating them in 1969. Banks do not take them. Get thee to a dealer!
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now that that's out of the way, the work update is that unfortunately, Disaster is back. No one knows why she hasn't been sacked. JaneRussell has put in her notice, and I will miss her. Meanwhile, FunADDboy is coming back. I've probably never mentioned him. He was a teller at our bank for maybe a year, or almost, then left to take a job at a credit union. He was fired from that job, probably because of his attention and wandering-around issues. Then, he went to work at a local thrift store, didn't work out there, and now, he's back. One more thing about FunADDboy: he left our bank with only a week's notice, which many people thought would disqualify him from coming back. But lo, he's coming back not as a teller, but as a customer service rep--he'll be on the platform, this time. A more difficult job. Let's watch!

So, sometime this holiday season, we'll have quite the platform: an assistant manager who thinks she's above answering the phone and calls off all the time, two others in a love-hate relationship with each other and a severe dislike for tellers who refer customers to them, and--FunADDboy. Nothing's going to get done over there! We've had an immature teller line before, but I've never ever seen this kind of line-up happen to a platform. JaneRussell is worried about leaving us tellers to deal with them, which is charmingly dramatic of her, but I'm not scared. If the shit hits the fan with a loud enough smack and a bad enough stench, someone--perhaps our regional manager--will finally notice.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Speaking of the holiday season, here comes Thanksgiving, which reminds me of turkeys, which reminds me that we saw a most unusual show on PBS called My Life as a Turkey. I couldn't decide whether Joe Hutto was amazingly talented or a bit wacko. Probably both. If you watch it, tell me what you think...

Also, speaking of Thanksgiving, I can't find our CD of Alice's Restaurant. I've looked everywhere. I need to have this.

Happy weekend! Whatchaupto?

Significant Saturday

2011-11-12T05:46:00.000-08:00

Significant is the word I would use for a beginning or an ending, or simply as a synonym for important. Today's PSU game (against Nebraska) has an ominous significance. It will be the first time in 61 years that former coach Joe Paterno will not be involved in a game.

It has been 26 years since I've walked through Happy Valley as a student, and the names of important people have changed; when I was a freshman, the President was John Oswald, then starting in 1983, it was Bryce Jordan. He retired in 1990. Then there was Joab Thomas for five years, until Graham Spanier took over in 1995. (Rodney Erickson has just been appointed the interim president.) New buildings have appeared, the academic calendar made the conversion from terms to semesters, cell phones and laptops became necessities. Through all these years and all these changes, "JoePa" remained a constant.

This happens to be a beautiful day here in South Central Pennsylvania and I will not be spending it indoors watching the game. This is not unusual, since I rarely watch football--voluntarily, that is. But I realize that football is important at my alma mater, and that it pays for all of the other sports. Its demise would hurt cross-country, gymnastics, wrestling, and fencing. Everything. Programs would suffer in ways that haven't even occurred to most people.

It seems that those who are involved in running PSU's football program should have been very aware of this, aware of the responsibility they have. Joe Paterno was certainly aware of his own money making potential, a fact he rather arrogantly trumpeted when the president tried to get him to retire a few years back, but he tragically lost perspective on that which was most important: this was all about the kids, remember? Paterno held his players to the highest standards. Anyone who got in any trouble at all was benched. Joe Paterno was supposed to be Mr. Integrity.

So, when a graduate assistant came to him to report something truly horrendous, the rape of a child by a former assistant coach, surely heads would roll, yes? Surely Paterno, who was like The God of All Goodness at Penn State would put the brakes on this pronto. You'd think he would be Superman on the Spot to save these poor boys. You'd think.

It's unfathomable that Jerry Sandusky did what he did and got away with it for such a long time because a few men chose to look the other way. Disturbing, sickening. Graham Spanier, Tim Curley, Gary Schultz--they all put the money machine ahead of the victims. Curley and Schultz are charged with perjury. Apparently, no one learned a thing from Watergate. Gee, looking back, what Richard Nixon did seems like small potatoes, but we all know that it was mostly the cover-up that made history. If only everyone with any knowledge of Sandusky's crimes had gone straight to the police at the time, many lives would be so much better today.

It's an awfully sunny day to be feeling so sad.

Woohoo! 49 and holding...

2011-11-10T03:40:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday, Mike!!

Status report

2011-11-08T18:41:00.000-08:00

Things at work are weird; it appears that Disaster, our latest assistant manager, has disappeared herself. After being on vacation for a week, she was a no show at work on her return date. Her boyfriend called her off, saying that she was in the hospital for some kind of minor problem. Then, she text messaged one of the staff to say she'd be in today, but again, she did not show up or call off. So. She'll not be coming back. Disaster has been one of the strangest episodes we've had. In the past, she's called off for a variety of reasons. One morning, she called and said, "I think my dog is dead." She called back a few minutes later to confirm this, and then took two days off. During this time, she went right out and got a puppy. Poor thing.

Sadly, JaneRussell is all set to transfer somewhere else because she is sick of the fact that the only way Disaster would communicate with her was by text messaging a coworker, using this person as a go-between!

Meanwhile, I've been working the opening shift a lot, and so far, all three of the supervisors I've opened with have forgotten their codes. This morning's supervisor called another supervisor to obtain the codes, and still couldn't open the night drop vault. Oh, man, I hate it when they all make Head Teller look good; when she finally got in, we got that vault open on the first go. Things are falling apart, here.

No one knows what's going on right now. I did not enjoy The Boy Wonder at all, and refuse to miss him, even in the face of Disaster. It's dangerous to even think this, but--surely, it has to get better. I'll try to watch it all as entertainment. It's sad, when the teller line is so much more dependable than the supervisors.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Otherwise, this has been a pleasant month so far for me. Ekim's birthday is coming up, and that will be a fun night, and I'm taking off on Friday, so I'll get caught up on all the little errands and other stuff I've been wanting to do. I love short weeks. Oh, and Thanksgiving is coming up, too. We're going to get together with a group of friends the night before, and then run/jog one of those turkey trot 5ks on Thanksgiving Day. I've never done that before. And I'm looking forward to visiting our families.

I'm reading Ghost Story, by Peter Straub and enjoying it very much, and need to keep reading, because LibraryThing sent me an intriguing early review book. More of that later.

Happy Wednesday!

Rabbit, rabbit! Good Luck in November!

2011-11-01T03:20:00.000-07:00

Rabbit, rabbit, everyone! Good luck getting those leaves raked into the street before it snows again.

Let's see, besides the snow we had in October, the other little tidbits of my life were Ekim's two-week absence (he was in Shanghai), going to my 30th high school reunion (and I was right; I had no idea what went on), and--reading Bram Stoker's Dracula for the first time. Exciting stuff!

Ekim and I rented a movie called Win Win, which I highly recommend. And, by the way, Alex Shaffer, the young man who played Kyle in the movie, really was the 2010 state champion wrestler in New Jersey at 119 pounds. (In the movie, they really rebel-out his look, giving him wild bleached hair and some ink.)

Mom, Della, and I also went out to see Paranormal Activity 3, which was very well-done. Mom was very pleasantly surprised, since she really did not expect to like it at all. I could not tempt Ekim to join us; he is just now recovering from the jet-lag blues.

And, well, I must confess that I'm filling out an application for another job, plotting to jump ship. Sadly, JaneRussell, the sweetest (and certainly the most FUN) person I work with, is trying to get transferred out of our branch. See a couple posts below...

EKim's birthday is in November, and so is his mom's, so I will be eating well--oh, yeah, and then there's Thanksgiving!

So, whatchaupto?

Just Another Day

2011-10-18T17:01:00.000-07:00

dis·as·ter (d-zstr, -ss-)
n.
1.
a. An occurrence causing widespread destruction and distress; a catastrophe.
b. A grave misfortune.
2. Informal -A total failure: The dinner party was a disaster.
3. Obsolete- An evil influence of a star or planet.
[French désastre, from Italian disastro : dis-, pejorative pref. (from Latin dis-; see dis-) + astro, star (from Latin astrum, from Greek astron; see ster-3 in Indo-European roots).]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

JaneRussell leads me to the ATM, adding emergency money after a weekend in which (assistant manager) Disaster has done nothing, apparently, according to JaneRussell, but state how hungover she was and talk about how many guys were involved (JaneRussell uses more colorful language, here).

And JaneRussell is dawdling, takin' her sweet time coming out to the ATM, which drives me nuts. People will soon start pouring in the use the machine, so let's go!

Acton: Move it!!!
JaneRussell: NO!! YOU'RE NOT MY MOTHER!!!
Acton: (mumbling) Yeah, but I could be [if I'd fallen for a linebacker]. C'mon.

And all the while we're in the vestibule, no customers around, we're singing an old Human League Song (I'm using my indoor voice, she is not), when I realize that our newish, very sweet manager has been sitting at his desk the entire time, no doubt being serenaded with don't you want me baby? Don't you want me OoooooOOO...and I, with coins for eyes, make this observation, but JaneRussell knows this, doesn't care, and I'm hoping he's just really engrossed in his work.

I was also hoping that Manager Bonbon isn't overhearing JaneRussell complaining about Disaster too much. It's hard to imagine what such a sweet guy is thinking about the drama in this place. No one wants to be around Disaster. Marilyn, our head teller, and Disaster are pretty much at war. How charming. Today, Bonbon called Marilyn into the conference room, and it was obvious that this wasn't about banking business. As Marilyn walked into the room, Disaster narrowed her eyes and stared, a look of vengeance, as if to say, so there, bitch, take that. I have no idea what it was about, but it's back and forth, tit for tat, and no one knows where it will end. Marilyn is petty and spoiled, and Disaster reminds me of the boss in The Devil Wears Prada.

She, who is salaried, never works long hours. I am not salaried, am not supposed to get overtime, but I wound up staying an hour later tonight to help out a newer supervisor who is not familiar with some of the settlement stuff that needs to be done. Disaster knew this, but left anyway. Hey, whatever. She's blaming this on Marilyn's scheduling, and it's not her problem.

At least one person is having fun around here.

Wake up, shake it off, go on

2011-10-09T16:53:00.000-07:00

It's a beautiful weekend, and I've enjoyed looking at it. Yesterday, I entered and ran a race, a 5K, for the first time in about a decade. I'm not exaggerating. There were so few people there that it didn't really feel like a race, and my body certainly wasn't up to racing; I finished 3.1 miles in about 27:40, which I should be embarrassed about admitting, but what the heck? A couple people I work with saw it, so if I'm still alive after that, I can certainly put it on my blog. Yeah, I joked about how I'm just way out of it these days, but I sensed that they were sort of patronizing me by even acknowledging my presence. But then, that's what I tend to think about everyone, especially these days.

This event did have an energizing effect on me, however; I actually got myself up to do a short interval workout and I worked out a schedule to make sure intervals and slightly longer runs become something that happen on a regular basis. And it's forced me to confront the fact that I've been sliding for the last ten years, for at least a couple reasons. Also, it's reminded me that I've been capable of working hard and achieving something, and that I can certainly regain some of that ethic. No, I'm not going to run as well now as I did back in 1997, but I can do a lot better than I'm doing, and that would make me feel a lot better about myself right now.

So, I'll try to grow some flowers in my mind, instead of being such a wilted weed.

It's getting late, so I better turn in and read Dracula until I drop off.

Happy Monday, have a good week!

Rabbit, rabbit!!

2011-10-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

Tell the world, it's October, already! Good luck, everyone. Whatchaupto?

Build a bridge and get over it.

2011-09-29T17:54:00.000-07:00

Easier said than done. Why am I so easily annoyed lately? Did I get too accustomed to the tranquility at the beach? Is the weather getting me down?

I'm letting Calamity get under my skin. Oh, man, do I ever get annoyed.

Every morning, when she comes in, I know what the first five words out of her mouth will be:

I am like so hungry....

...my pop tart got like stuck in the toaster and I like didn't have time to get it out and like eat it so I like brought it with me

There's a different story every morning, but that's the only one I remember right now.

She invades my personal space, she speaks so loudly that I can't get away from her voice, and she asks me questions that I can't answer and I can't figure out what to say to make her go away...

Do you think that this yogurt is like still good? Cuz I had it like in the refrigerator for like two hours after the power like went out...she will find several ways of asking me the same random question--and then she won't even pay any regard to any response I come up with. But I must say something, because she will keep staring at me until I do.
Even when it's time for her to go home, she spends so much time saying her good-byes that I have trouble not becoming sarcastic. GO HOME, CALAMITY. NOW.

I often feel like I'm dealing with a small child. Today, she stood in the door of the drive-thru during her break, and while annoyingly smacking her food, started asking me questions about what I was doing. It reminded me of how our adorable next door neighbor kids used to run up to the fence and say, "whatcha doin'?" And we'd chuckle and say, "unloading the groceries." Now I find myself explaining to this mid-twenty-something that yes, I finished ATM settlement and yes, I will be doing coin machine settlement, but Wilma will be doing that other settlement.

Exciting stuff. Gets done every day. Now run along.

I'm such a bitch! Sure, other people notice this stuff, but I'm the one who seems to have the worst allergy to her.

Perhaps I'm turning into a grumpy old lady. Ah, but please save me from awful clothes...

Galoshes

2011-09-28T16:38:00.001-07:00

All this rain is getting worrisome. The trees can't possibly drink up all this rain, some of the smaller ones are losing their hold on the earth and falling down. Our weather has snapped. What happened? Is this some kind of major climate change? Will the precipitation this winter bury us?

The little building I work in is leaking in three places, parts of our parking lot were wading territory this afternoon, and there is now standing water in the backyards of our neighborhood. Since we live on a loop, and our backyards all come together, I can see four other backyards very easily. The one right in back of us has a decent pond now. The ducks will start migrating uphill, and proclaim our area a suburb of Creek Road. Creek Road will probably be completely closed tomorrow. I hate it when that happens.

Fall is supposed to be beautiful, and I hope that the rain will let up soon enough for us all to enjoy it. Okay, so The Apple Fest was cancelled for the first time ever this year, and so were the goat races I'd wanted to see, but--there's still time! The rain could stop, and things could dry up and perhaps the rest of fall will be delightful. It could happen.

If we get stuck inside our houses this early, way before winter comes, there will be a lot of crazy looney sick mean grumpy silly wacko people to deal with. I don't want that.

Why didn't I get a pair of galoshes?? I'm starting to think that they may be a necessity in these parts.

Happy Fall!

2011-09-22T06:32:00.000-07:00

It's getting harder and harder to come back from vacations, but I must say, the comfortable weather does make it easier. Even if it is a little mind bending.

We had a very relaxing time on vacation, roosting on the beach, eating, manufacturing z's (heh, the expressions that have entered the lexicon), and reading. We both read a lot. I finished The Sot-Weed Factor, by John Barth, which is a long-winded but very funny satire of the 16th century novel, and I'm almost finished reading The Hunger Games series, by Suzanne Collins. This series is so addictive and compelling that I can hardly wait to be done. It's exhausting to read for so long, but I have to, except when I must work or do something else. I'm been ravished.

The vacation pictures are over on the Fly Away section. No where near as exciting as having a baby, of course!

Happy first day of fall, and TGIF

Scrabbled Brains

2011-09-04T05:48:00.001-07:00

Yes, it is, and I'm going to start using it in conversation. As in, "Wednesday is our za night." So there.

My mind is scrabbled because we're going on vacation soon, and that means we'll play Scrabble every evening. I will lose, but that's okay. It's the exercise that counts.

The Scrabble word for today is snarky. It means snappish. So, next time you're lucky enough to own a y and a k, AND can add an s to another word (employ those s's with care!)--good for you. Snarky is worth 13 points naked, but of course you'll find a double-word spot, or at least get more points for that word you just made plural.

Here is an interesting little tidbit on one of the highest-scoring games of Scrabble ever (played on the lawn of a Unitarian Church). Obviously, I need to start cramming some useful three-letter words into my brain. One of the best three-letter words is cwm, which is a valley or glen. And yes, it is a real word. Another one is qat. It's Arabian tea.
I wonder if it would be okay for me to drink out of this mug while we play?

Oh, oh, man, check out Extreme Scrabble. I keep telling myself that I need to play faster, because if a better move doesn't occur to me within five minutes, then it's probably a waste of time to keep waffling. But these people, as you'll see, are really and truly engrossed. (My favorite picture is the one with the two lions, sniffing the tiles just like Serena used to do.)

And of course, there's the collection of LOLCats Scrabble pictures, including the classic vowel movement, located on the second page.

If you're still with me, and still sitting on your rumpus surfing the net as I am, check out these creative Scrabble advertizements. Pretty clever. And here's more! I love these.

No complaining!

It's just a game. It's just a game. It's just a game! No one's gonna die here...(now I've seen everything.)

Feel better, now?

In case I'm not feeling defeated enough, perhaps I'll try to follow a game of double-bag Clabbers. Clabbers is an anagram for Scrabble, which explains this board. Mostly explains. I still need a little bit of help understanding some of these plays.

Okay, enough about Scrabble. Now for Lee and Katia....may they not bestow too much wrath on us all.

Happy Labor Day!

Something to be happy about

2011-09-02T16:28:00.001-07:00

It was a bear of a day today, but it's over. And it's a three day weekend! That time we had customers to the door and stacked in the drive-thru while our computers crashed--forgotten!! I'm going to have a couple glasses of wine tonight that will make my headache go away.

Now for some funny pictures:

This is a much worse day than I've ever had on a job.

Now, this is definitely smiling in the face of stress.

Oh, yeah, it's Labor Day. Be thankful you have a job. My workplace is open, but I don't have to work.

Men don't need door knobs, and the handicapped get a slide?

Um, not this weekend, thanks...

Wooooooow, I won't drink that much this weekend, I promise.

That's the amazing thing about stereotyping: this seems to be so true to me, despite the fact that I have not traveled extensively nor known any Europeans very well.
That's right! So--whatchaupto?

Rabbit, rabbit!!

2011-09-01T06:08:00.000-07:00

September??? Holy cow, or fox, as the case may be, it's that time of year again. Time for the kids to go off and learn to do new stuff, time for the lifeguards to hang it up and close the pools, time for the crickets to come out, and nearly time for us to go to Mexico!

I nearly forgot to do my rabbitses, as I'm trying to make my way through a long book ere vacation begins because--well, no particularly great reason, I'd just rather be reading something else at the beach, that all. It's not that The Sot-Weed Factor (John Barth) isn't sufficiently full of plot twists, humor, and fun. And everything's Nooked, so. It's not a problem, I can certainly alternate betwixt the two. (My other fancy is The Hunger Game Trilogy, Suzanne Collins.)

It's cooler in the mornings now! Ah, the weather's so fabulous right now, I wish it were our lot to have it thus all the year. Marry, we need to wallow in it without the thought of snow to come.

Good luck in September, everyone! Any special plans?

Appealing

2011-08-26T19:07:00.000-07:00

This is just dreamy! It adds meaning to flopping at night and then rolling out of bed. I love it.

Ah, yes, roll out of bed and into a deep tub...there's no end to my laziness, actually.

Have a great weekend, everyone! If it pour buckets on you, make sure there's something good to read. By candlelight. Make sure you have candles, just in case...

What's the Buzz?

2011-08-16T09:42:00.000-07:00

The Buzz here is that I made it through another book, the singular Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? by Johan Harstad.

This is the story of how Mattias, from Stavanger, Norway, navigates his life through some very rough years of severe mental anguish.

I was the kid in your class in elementary school, in high school, at college, whose name you can't remember when you take out the class photo ten years later, to show your boyfriend or girlfriend how you looked back then. I was the boy that sat almost a the center of the class, one desk from the wall, the guy who never forgot his gym clothes, who was always ready for the test, who was never rowdy in class, but answered when he was asked, who never insisted on performing long skits in the school show, who never put himself forward as Student or Class Rep. I was the one you'd been in class with for almost six month before you knew his name. I was the one you didn't miss when I left your class and started at another school....

...and that was the way Mattias liked it. He didn't like attention, he just wanted to be left alone, in peace and quiet. He did want to be useful, to have a purpose, and so he envisioned himself as just one cog in a great machine, doing useful, meaningful work--but invisible.

Mattias idolizes Buzz Aldrin, and the idea of his being the second man on the moon. Aldrin performed all this vital research, then slipped back into anonymity. And Mattias just happened to be born on July 20, 1969, while most of the other people in the hospital were watching Neil Armstrong take those first steps on the moon.

With the comparatively obscure Buzz Aldrin as his prototype, Mattias tries to quietly pad his way through school until he develops a strong crush on Helle, a girl at school he tortures himself watching, until at their class Halloween party, Mattias works up the nerve to stand up in front of a band and--sing. Yep, he lifted up that visor on his astronaut costume, and sang very well. Ironically, Mattias has taken signing lessons, but neither of his friends know this, until this moment. The attention Mattias gets afterward is very irksome to him, but--he does get the girl, and that's important to the rest of the story.

It will be years before Mattias sings in public again. On the contrary, he becomes a gardener, since it's such a peaceful job and plants are so easy to talk to. And he's living with Helle, and for a while, he thinks things are going fine, for about thirteen years. Unfortunately, the nursery he's been working for is struggling so badly that the owner must close. While Mattias is processing this change, Helle confesses that she's in love with someone else, and she's leaving him. That's a bad week for anyone.

So, when Mattias's longtime, childhood pal and band member Jorn wants him to go on a trip to the Faroe Islands with him and a couple other bands, he doesn't say no. However, something happens to Mattias that first night that he will never be able to remember, but will result in his waking up all alone, outside in the freezing rain, with absolutely no idea where he is. As Mattias lies curled up on a bus stop bench, about to freeze to death, a car comes along.

I'm going to stop telling the story right there. In the days, weeks, and months that follow, Mattias becomes very attached to a few other people and plays an important part in the life they have together. It is the opposite of disappearing. And, as Mattias notes, no one can be invisible on The Faroes because there are so few regular inhabitants that every one of them will surely notice everyone else. The main characters populating Mattias's experience are wonderfully written and I liked all of them. Also, the description of The Faroe Islands is appealing and intriguing enough to make me want to go.

Johan Harstad has written so many good passages into this book that the pages seemed to melt away, and four hundred and seventy pages didn't seem long. And I really must go listen to The Cardigans, too....

Thank you, LibraryThing, for this Early Reviewer gem.

Same Old

2011-08-12T00:00:00.000-07:00

A long-absent friend came through the drive-thru today, and I was happy to see her up and about again. She'd had back surgery followed by months of recovery and rehab, and now she's finally, slowly, working up to a normal daily routine. When she asked what was up with me, I said, I'm fine, ya know, same old. No big news. To this, friend replied that same old sounded wonderful. And it's so true, isn't it?

August has been almost painfully slow at work. Since I'm in the drive-thru most of the time, I could be quietly reading this book that has me captivated, since our new supervisor doesn't seem to have any problem with reading back there. Unfortunately, I'm often working with Calamity, and it's LIKE really impossible because she LIKE keeps asking me all these LIKE questions that have nothing to do with anything, or LIKE she already knows the answers to.

One thing new supervisor has had to enforce, in the drive-thru, is that we're no longer allowed to have a certain electronic device that starts with R and ends in O and used to keep Calamity LIKE a little less bored and a little, LIKE, less prone to talk about inane things. I'm sick of the word because Calamity complains about its absence, LIKE, every. day. She doesn't, LIKE, get over stuff. Oh, and there's, LIKE, drama and unfairness all around her, too. At least she, LIKE, saves most of that complaining for her friend Lorelei.

Can we lobby to remove a certain word from the English language? I'm LIKE so LIKE sick of it that I LIKE might start to LIKE actually act LIKE annoyed.

I'm not exaggerating this LIKEness, either. Oy. Vent over.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now for something pretty:

The novel I'm reading now takes place mostly in Torshavn. I was only vaguely aware of these islands, I saw them once on The Big Blue Marble show when I was a kid. The world is a wondrous place, in places. More pictures of the Faroe Islands over there.

This is the weekend that we do the annual Acton & Ekim picnic-frolic thing for family and a few friends. AND I'm making a long weekend of it. Four days heavenly days as home-bound as possible, up to the same old stuff...good times!

Whatchaupto?

Snow (Hey Oh)-The Vitamin String Quartet

2011-08-08T00:00:00.000-07:00

The goal was to brainstorm good, entertaining songs to help me endure life on a treadmill. It's been humid enough here lately to make that treadmill in the basement, with the fan pointed strategically, to look sooo much better than a run outside. *gasp*

I got sidetracked, as I so often do, with the discovery of The Vitamin String Quartet. They adapt and perform popular music and show tunes. On second thought, perhaps I didn't get so sidetracked...

Random Pictures from a Birthday

2011-08-06T06:09:00.000-07:00

I got it in my head that I really really wanted to see Longwood Gardens again. Ekim and I enjoyed the place back when we were dating, and were back once more around the holidays a couple years later (the conservatory decked out with poincettias was memorable), so it seemed time to go back again. We were lucky with the weather; it wasn't heatwave hot as it's been so recently, nor raining, which it will definitely do today.

This was the first time I'd bothered to notice just how Pierre du Pont became rich enough to buy this land in 1906 and build this Versailles-inspired paradise: Pierre and his cousin Francis Gurney du Pont developed the first American smokeless gunpowder in 1892. (Pierre had a degree in chemistry from MIT.) The DuPont company was founded in 1802, well before Pierre was born, so the gunpowder development was simply--more money.

It is obvious that Pierre du Pont was more interested in gardening and botany than chemistry, but he was also into music. That's another aspect of his estate that I'd forgotten about: he had a magnificent Steinway grand player piano. It cost over $3000 in 1928. (Depression? What's that?) It sounds beautiful. I could listen all day...Pierre liked it so much that he ordered a second one a year later.

My pictures do not do Longwood Gardens justice, and furthermore, the most spectacular views are to be had in the springtime, not summer. Well, maybe not this year, since our weather has been so difficult. Anyway, when it comes to beautiful plants, Ekim and I did acknowledge that we've become rather jaded, after all those trips to Mexico. And yet--it takes real talent to grow such beautiful gardens here. In contrast, the groundskeepers in the Riviera Maya region must work nonstop to keep stuff cut back, the better to see it all.

Ah, all those fountains going, with a slight breeze, gave us a pleasant spritzing. From all the old pictures in the du Pont house (which I forgot to take a picture of), I gather that the du Pont kids used to play in the fountains. IN the fountains. All of them. Good times...growing up must have been rough!

And now I still have the weekend to enjoy. It's okay if it rains, the time to laze around is such luxury. Have a relaxing weekend, everyone!

Rabbit, rabbit, good luck in August!!

2011-08-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

Good luck in August, everyone! Did anyone go to an amusement park this year? We probably won't. It's been a long time, and lately, it's been very hot in these parts, so I suppose that those who are not at the water rides don't have to bake in the sun too long to get on the dry rides.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~and now, for a short book review:

"Beautiful Maria of My Soul. A song about love so far away it hurts; a song about lost pleasures, a song about youth, a song about love so elusive a man can never know where he stands; a song about wanting a woman so much death does not frighten you, a song about wanting that woman even when she has abandoned you."

Oscar Hijuelos's novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love is a beautifully written historical novel about Cesar Castillo, who comes to New York City from Cuba in 1949 with his younger brother Nestor with the dream of becoming successful musicians. For a short period of their tumultuous lives, this dream does come true.

At the end of his life in 1980, Cesar has deliberately ensconced himself in The Hotel Splendour, to die alone. This is his story, told in flashback. As the reader will surmise immediately, Cesar Castillo never became rich, never lived an easy life, and the excessiveness of his lifestyle--the constant drinking, the lack of sleep, the womanizing--are there to drown out Cesar's deep-seated emotional problems and unhappiness. Cesar is the brother who is always able to hide this melancholy from himself and others, yet when the withdrawn, taciturn Nestor dies, his defenses crumble. It is as if Nestor bequeathed his depression to his older brother, to carry along with the self-destructive habits that were already there.

Cesar Castillo is a richly drawn character who has his good-natured, generous A side, along with his dastardly B side. He is crippled by the need to be macho, but there is a love-starved, abused boy that is still crying out for help. And so, at the end of his life, there are people he has hurt as well as people who will remember him fondly and gratefully forever.

Oscar Hijuelos made every character's pain throb on the page. He made Cesar's alcoholism painful and his sexual urges unbearable, yet this is not a hard book to read.

The author also brings a time period and culture back to life in this story. I enjoyed the book very much!

Mambo Kings Sing Songs of Love won the Pulitizer Prize in 1990.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's hard to believe we've arrived in August, the Sunday of summer. All summer means to me is hotter temperatures, an occasional trip to the pool, and getting closer to our September vacation. Oh, and adding another birthday to my growing collection, that pile we are all building, like it or not! I don't have much to write about at the moment, but--I'm still here:)

What's up with you?

Appointment in Samarra, by John O'Hara

2011-07-17T11:52:00.000-07:00

Appointment in Samarra, by John O'Hara, is the telling of how Julian English's life spirals out of his control in three days. On the first day, he throws a drink in the face of Harry Reilly, a man to whom he owes money. On the second day, he is openly unfaithful to his wife Caroline with the mistress of a gangster who has been good for English's Cadillac business. And finally, on the third, he gets into a very bad altercation at an eating club. He is drunk almost constantly during this time, which happens to be Christmas and the two days afterwards.

At the end of the story, I did not feel that any of his problems had to be the end of the world--given that he straighten up and fly straight--but Julian English is a depressed person and obviously a self-destructive one who has suicidal thoughts three times in this story before acting on it. And one part of his life that was probably irreparably damaged was his marriage; Caroline was dreadfully unhappy, and I got the feeling that she was finished with him.

I will interject my perception that the three days, three acts, and three suicidal thoughts in this story do seem to constitute a trinity theme, which may be a stylistic echo of Julian's discomfort with the Catholic community, of which Harry Reilly is member.

O'Hara prefaces his story with W. Sommerset Maugham's Death Speaks to very good effect. The reader knows that Julian English is fated to die and will not escape that fate. As Julian's father, Dr. William English, pronounces his son dead, he thinks of his own father. Julian's grandfather had also lead a destructive life that ended by his own hand, and so Dr. English is resigned to the belief that the suicide gene had jumped a generation, that this was Julian's time to die.

Meanwhile, other people react with surprise. Harry Reilly is astonished, and acknowledges that he knew Julian liked him. "He wouldn't borrow a nickel from me if he didn't like me." And later, "...I wonder what in God's name would make him do a thing like that?" Of course, we know that Reilly was plenty angry with English about the drink, which gave him a black eye, but this is an example of how some of Julian English's perceptions are wildly exaggerated. Tragically, it is this drunken insult to Reilly that sets him in downward motion, because he truly believes that Reilly is going to get back at him in some way that will ruin his livelihood. Julian's wife Caroline is shocked, traumatized, and aggrieved. This is not the ending she foresaw, but I got the feeling that she would eventually pick up the pieces and go on. It is impossible to escape the thought that, in the long run, Julian's suicide might have made her life easier.

Appointment in Samarra is also a window into the historically fascinating time of prohibition, including the prejudices and social mores of that time, and is also of special interest to those familiar with the Lehigh Valley, in Pennsylvania. John O'Hara wrote his novel in an appealing third person narrative style with dialogue that seems very natural. But then, O'Hara knew the time and place very well, having been born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania in 1905.

This was a good read.

Rabbit, rabbit!!

2011-07-01T00:00:00.001-07:00

Ah, yes, waiting for a long day to go by while chasing other rabbits. No, it doesn't keep me awake. Maybe it's because the rabbits are only imaginary rabbits. Or maybe my dogs are tired.

Either way, it's FRIDAY. And it's a long weekend. Maybe I'll get rowdy and daring and--go get some sparklers. Yeah, and champagne. Sparklers and champagne. While hula-hooping. Hmm, this calls for some interesting music.

This woman can really hula hoop, and I love the music.

Happy weekend, and good luck in July!

My Latest Freebie

2011-06-27T18:13:00.000-07:00

The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb, by Melanie Benjamin, is a very engaging historical novel based on the true life story of one Mercy Lavinia Warren Bump, born on October 31, 1841 in Middleboro, Massachusetts. As the title suggests, it is written in the first person, from the perspective of the woman known at first as Lavinia Warren, and later on as Mrs. Tom Thumb.

Warren was born into a loving family, but was determined to make her own way, and so embarked on the intriguing adventure that was to be her life. First, she traveled with a small company of "curiosities" on a riverboat, until The Civil War interrupted that venture, then later performed at P.T. Barnum's American Museum, until she married the most famous little person in history, Charles Stratton, more widely known as Tom Thumb. Standing less than a yard high, Lavinia was determined not to let her diminutive size define her life as small and unmemorable. And indeed, her marriage to Tom Thumb was front page news that rivaled dispatches of the war. They traveled the world and met some of the most important and famous people of their day.

This all sounds quite grand, but there was also much sadness in their lives; Stratton and Warren did not have a natural spousal relationship, since Warren was understandably horrified of the idea of getting pregnant. She and her younger sister, both little people, had been normal sized babies, weighing in at about six pounds. Charles Stratton (Tom Thumb) had weighed nine pounds at birth! Years later, Warren's younger sister, who was even more delicate than herself, would indeed become pregnant and refuse all medical advice to have an abortion because she wanted so badly to be a mother. This proved to be lethal for both mother and child. It was heartbreaking, of course.

Their lives were both interesting and very challenging, and Lavinia found herself wondering whether or not she'd trade all this experience to be a normal size. Good thing, she thought, that the point was moot.

Warren never wrote her own autobiography, and there is no way of knowing how she felt, but I think Melanie Benjamin has done a skillful job of imagining the inner life of an unusual and intelligent woman against a tumultuous and rapidly changing historical backdrop.

I enjoyed this novel very much, and admire its adherence to historical fact.

Beautiful Sunday

2011-06-26T05:04:00.001-07:00

Ah, another weekend, it always feels so good. I've been feeling especially tired of the same old same old.

Simple pleasures that someday I will have--time to just browse through stores, instead of going on a hunting trip. I wouldn't spend a fortune, honest, but there are things I could just--browse. How many types of rice are there? What types of gadgets can you find in the whatsit aisle in the grocery store? I'm a natural meanderer, and all this focusing is so hard.

I've decided that I need a new hobby. Nothing complicated or expensive, of course. Something I can do whenever I want, just like reading books and writing about books and shopping for books, except that it won't be about books, except for reference. And the new pastime will be loom knitting! I've watched it on YouTube and read about it online, and I've decided that this will be great fun. Meditation would also be good for me. Once I get good with the loom, perhaps I can do both at the same time.

Happy days are ahead!

The birds are loud, and next door neighbor's side door is open. That's a rarity. Bachelor is so mysterious, I hardly see him coming or going these many years, haven't seen his daughter visit, let alone his ex-wife. She kept the yard so beautifully. He's letting everything go. Haven't heard his poor neurotic dog lately, either. (She's a one-human kind of German Shepherd who would be barking hysterically if she could see that I had the nerve to be on my patio.)

Fireflies! Such interesting creatures. They are ground-huggers until it gets really dark, then they ascend like little floating points of light. Funny, I haven't paid them much attention in years.

Ekim and I played Scrabble this weekend, and despite the fact that I was gifted with all the s's and Ekim did not get a single bingo, he won. But it was a surprisingly good game. And when I'm playing Scrabble, I am an active and important participant, which is not something I get to be very often. (Score: 350 to 309, and I went out with OUT.)

No bats this year, or last. They must have taken such a chunk out of the local gnat population that they had to move one. But I'm getting bit up, as I sit out here on my new plastic chair that I got at Lowe's, an Adirondack style that's wide across the arms and does not fold. I bought two of them, not thinking about their dimensions compared to my car's. Hmm. So, I was outside, this crazy lady going through some weird gyrations with a couple of plastic chairs. Helpful Guy was delighted to figure this puzzle out, flip-flopping them and maneuvering them into my back seat. Impressive. Wow, I said, you can tell that I was never good at tangrams. It's possible that we made each other's day--or at least maybe it made his moment. It made my day. He laughed, you have to get them out. That turned out to be quite easy. And I'm enjoying them. Well, it. I can only sit on one at a time. As I say, they're pretty wide.

I came out here to read, and all I've done is run my mouth on paper (and the book has been quite engaging).

*In my last post, I mentioned a penguin that had recently made a migration mistake. Well, so have flamingos. Here is a very interesting story about how two flamingos, one in 2003, and the other the very next year, wound up in Siberia.

~Intermission~~

2011-06-22T16:09:00.000-07:00

Did you hear about that poor penguin who took a wrong turn and wound up in New Zealand? Gee, I hope he finds his way back home!

Fictional June

2011-06-21T05:38:00.000-07:00

The New Yorker Summer Fiction issue is not to be missed! Really, give it a look...so many different adventures are hiding inside one magazine, including an excerpt of the next novel by Jeffrey Eugenides! It will be called The Marriage Plot. I can hardly wait.

This issue has definitely interrupted my novel reading. And then I discover that Junot Diaz, who also has a short piece in this issue, is revealing what he's reading in June, and tempting me to add a book to the ever-increasing stack that I dream of someday experiencing.

Ann Patchett (Bel Canto), who also has a new book out (State of Wonder), is also bewitching with her own Newsweek Book Bag.

It's such a shame that I must go to work.

Happy reading!

Fifth Business

2011-06-15T17:10:00.000-07:00

This is the story of Dunstable Ramsey's life, written out in first person and addressed to the headmaster of the school where Ramsey had spent about forty years of his professional life. After all these years, Ramsey leaves behind this testament with the simple desire that someone understand what he had lived for.

His story gets off to a dismal start, as he is raised in a very rigid fashion in Deptford, a small village in Canada. Ramsey starts his memoir with the story that informed the rest of his life--or rather, it was his interpretation of the events of this fateful afternoon and the guilt he carried around with him that affected him forever. There is another boy involved in this story, Percy "Boy" Staunton, and the two of them make perfect foils.

While Ramsey lives an almost monkish life, Staunton grows rich and very well-known. While Ramsey is a scholar quietly publishing books on his subject, Staunton is hosting and attending lavish parties and building a business empire. That their friendship survives seems surprising at first, but it gradually becomes apparent that they do have their own form of symbiosis.

This is a fascinating story, in which Ramsey wrestles with his own life's meaning and duties. Some of the interesting characters he meets while studying in Europe (on sabbatical) do much to help him out. A memorable quote from a character named Liesl:

Do you know who I think you are, Ramsay? I think you are Fifth Business. "You don't know what that is? Well, in opera in a permanent company of the kind we keep up in Europe you must have a prima donna -- always a soprano, always the heroine, often a fool; and a tenor who always plays the lover to her; and then you must have a contralto, who is a rival to the soprano, or a sorceress or something; and a basso, who is the villain or the rival or whatever threatens the tenor.
"So far, so good. But you cannot make a plot work without another man, and he is usually a baritone, and he is called in the profession Fifth Business, because he is the odd man out, the person who has no opposite of the other sex. And you must have Fifth Business because he is the one who knows the secret of the hero's birth, or comes to the assistance of the heroine when she thinks all is lost, or keeps the hermitess in her cell, or may even be the cause of somebody's death if that is part of the plot. The prima donna and the tenor, the contralto and the basso, get all the best music and do all the spectacular things, but you cannot manage the plot without Fifth Business! It is not spectacular, but it is a good line of work, I can tell you, and those who play it sometimes have a career that outlasts the golden voices. Are you Fifth Business? You had better find out."

Without ruining the plot, there are corresponding characters in Ramsey's story, and it doesn't give too much away to say that Percy Staunton is certainly the villianous one. Also, there is a mystery of sorts that will be solved at the very end.

I'm leaving out a very important character entirely, so the future reader has something to discover. One of the things that made this book such a pleasure to read was the dialogue Ramsey has with some of the most vivid, engaging characters I've read in a long time.

Check this one out! It's the first book in The Deptford Trilogy, and it is highly likely that I will read the other ones, as well.

Alright

2011-06-13T16:38:00.000-07:00

Copacetic. One of my coworkers came up to me today with this word scrawled on a piece of paper and wondered if I knew what it meant. Actually, I love this word. It's hardly ever used, which makes the heart grow fonder. There's something about the hard c and the exploding, breathless p followed by that soft, gently lisping c before everything ends hard again. I might be swooning.

Ekim and I actually went out to a bar together for the first time in a long while to see friends of ours play. It's been so long that their talent shook me. And the place

we were inhabiting that night was just dreamy. There were supposed to be storms, but they passed us by, leaving us with a perfect night. Lucky thing for us, for we'd parked a few blocks away.

My car was inspected for another year, and I rewarded myself for the stress of waiting for the prognosis and the agony of hard-chaired waiting rooms by purchasing another pair of sandals. I need, them, really, because they are black. How does anyone get by without basic black in their sandal collection?

And then, the weekend came to an end, but not before I'd added new music to my collection, podcasted all the weekend shows I'd missed while reading, and saw an excellent movie ("Fair Game", our latest Netflix picture).

Getting up to a pleasantly cool morning, with enough time to run before work, was a bonus. My schedule is all over the place, but today was so....copacetic.

Peas and Carrots

2011-06-11T09:27:00.000-07:00

Writing with nothing to write about...what's the cure? Stealing a meme from someone else? Okay. I'm good at that. Can't I make up my own? No, no I can't. So, here goes.

Turkey or ham?

When I can, I avoid both. Turkeys, chickens, and geese are treated horribly during their short lives on factory farms, and I feel very, very bad about this. Meanwhile, pigs are simply too smart to be bred for meat. Poor Homer. That said, I've grown up eating and enjoying both types of meals, but now I call them guilty pleasures

Sweet or salty?

Salty. My sweet tooth seems to have taken a permanent hike. Sure, I still enjoy an occasional dessert, but I don't crave them. For instance, when someone brings donuts into work in the morning, or bakes a cake to commemorate a birthday, I do not feel the urge to eat them. This is strange, because it wasn't too many years ago that I walked into a Gertrude Hawks candy store to buy Ekim his birthday Smidgens and was self-conscious that maybe I might be drooling. It was the candy corn by the entrance that was bewitching me.

On the other hand, I ate so many Doritos one day during our Chicago trip that I might be off Doritos for awhile. It's best if I don't even start eating potato chips. There's no control there whatsoever.

Oceans or Mountains?

Oceans. duh

Jazz or pop?

It depends.

(doin' a great job with this meme, huh?)

Hardcover or paperback?

I like paperbacks. They're lighter and more comfortable to hold. As I've already said, I'm also Nooked, but that's not answering the question.

Truth or dare?

Truth. It's so much more flexible than a dare. You can underplay or exaggerate the truth, but if you're dared to do something, you have to do said something. I'm not good at being publicly silly, loud, or bizarre unless I've had too much to drink, but that might kill me at my age. So, "truth" it is.

M&Ms-peanut or peanut butter?

I don't care.

A one room library or books in every room in your house?

I have this romantic vision of living in a mansion with one huge library with one of those ladders that you need to reach the highest shelf from an bookcase that's embedded into the wall. Of course, with my housekeeping skills, the books would wind up everywhere, anyway.

Gum or breath mint?

Breath mint. Gum is annoying.

Painting or photograph?

If we're generalizing, I'd rather look at a gallery of paintings than a gallery of photographs--usually.

Spring or fall?

Fall. Spring is a cruel tease which only flashed us this year.

Past or future?

Future. I've forgotten so much about the past, and some of what I do remember is often embarrassing or painful.

Black or red?

I don't know. Usually black, I suppose.

Uncertain theory or absolute fact?

I'm less certain all the time that I know any absolute facts. I'd certainly prefer facts. (Obviously, my brain isn't processing this one very well.)

Donald or Daffy?

Daffy's more fun.

Okay, meme-urge over. Time to do something constructive with the day. I'd love to read your version of this meme!

XXX

2011-06-07T13:29:00.000-07:00

It's now been thirty years since I graduated from high school, a rite of passage I now barely remember. The only thing I remember positively is that I'd wanted to skip the ceremony. I'd already gone through freshman orientation at Penn State, moved into my dorm room, been to all of my classes once, and so did not relish the quick back-and-forth trip that was necessary to achieve graduation attendance. Granny came, so of course I did. And I would've, anyway; Mom would have come to get me, ready or not. Skipping out was not an option. I shared PSU's main campus and the same dilemma with approximately nine hundred other freshman, so it must have been a rather strange weekend on campus, with everyone scurrying back home again.

That's why I was too distracted to remember graduation. If it weren't for the few pictures that were taken, I might not be sure that I was there. I hardly remember going to the prom, but I know that happened, too. Yet, if I hadn't gone to the prom or graduation, I would be regretting it now, sure that I'd missed something very exciting. (Jealousy is all the fun you think they had, as Erica Jong wrote in Fear of Flying.) I did miss my class trip because I overslept, but looking back, that might have been a Freudian nap, because I don't feel any pangs about missing an amusement park trip, none whatsoever.

Getting back to what happened thirty years ago, though, what did they say to us at graduation? Surely, we were given advice or some sort. Who spoke? I haven't a clue, and I probably didn't know the next morning, either.

Thirty years. If I didn't know that, if I just woke up one morning with all my vague memories, but had no concept of what year it was, how old would I take myself to be? Ah, middle age is so cruel. See, I get up in the morning feeling either fine or pretty good. As far as I know, there are no worrisome health issues plaguing my body. Yet. But at some point, I will stroll into the bathroom and see myself in the mirror and then any delusions are over. Reality will return, this isn't a dream, it really is no longer 1985 and that really is my face, my body, my hair. Sometimes, I catch sight of my eyes in the rear view mirror as I'm driving and think, those are my eyes? Really? Shit. I keep forgetting. I don't feel like 47 going on 48, especially not mentally. Surely, no one believes that I ever became a real adult, because let me tell you, I did not. I still see myself as immature and insecure, and I'm certainly distractible and scatterbrained. (And my voice never ever sounds like waawawaa, like Charlie Brown's teachers.)

What have I done with the last thirty years? Oh, this and that.

I still have this daydream of being a lighthouse keeper in some beautiful place.

I told you: I'm not a grownup.

It's all about Monday

2011-06-07T00:00:00.000-07:00

The word Monday is usually a lament, but this time 'round, it was my day off after six days on. So, this is my lazy day. Tomorrow (Tuesday), it's back to the same old same old.

It's nice to have a weekday off, once in awhile. A closet is now cleaner. I finally finished a quaint little novel, dumped some old stuff on an area thrift shop, shopped at said thrift shop, made an appointment to get my car inspected, and ran about six miles. It was a good day, and beautiful t'boot. Oh, and I caught up with this weekend's edition of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, which I've finally started to podcast, and also watched some Stephen Colbert online. I feel so much better now.

Sadly, it's back to work tomorrow, but at least I have my house in order, so to speak. And I think I've lost ONE pound. It's a start. I have a doctor's appointment that's less than a month away and I don't want to talk about a certain issue, so it's best to just remedy matters the best I can.

Ah, all this sunshine, after all that rain. It's a fabulous shock. Cheers, here's to a lovely week!

Rabbit, rabbit!!

2011-06-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

You're taking a picture of me? Seriously? Like, there are so many of us here that you could freakin' point that thing anywhere and like freakin' see one of us, like, or maybe two--whatever. You just like scared me a bit the way you came up like it was kinda creepy and I had my head turned the other way and so it freakin' scared me. It scared me. Like, I was just eating clover. I'm mean, the f...k. Freakin' sneak up on bunnies.

Whatever. Glad you're, like, going away now. It was like a nice day until you like started in with the camera thingie. I'm just gonna like keep eating or maybe I'll just freakin' move on to the next yard, like no one's like pestering bunnies over there.

Are the bunnies in your neck of the woods talking this way?

Oh, well, good luck in June, everyone!

Do you believe in...

2011-05-24T07:00:00.000-07:00

This year's Magic Collectors Weekend was exceptionally intriguing, a word here that means, "the wife did not flee to go shopping, walking, reading, TV watching, or whatnot." The convention got under way with a precautionary note, when one of the first presenters got up and announced that unfortunately, there would be no Sunday auction this year. What? He then held up a full page add in the local newspaper that proclaimed Saturday night the end of everything. (Ha! He had me going. About the auction, I mean.)

Among the most interesting subjects was the ongoing mystery of who wrote The Expert at the Card Table, by S. W. Erdnase. There is no such person as S.W. Erdnase, but if you read the name backwards, it does spell E. S. Andrews, a frustratingly common name. At the time of its printing, most books were published in New York City, but this one came out of Chicago. It turns out that there's a good reason for that. It's all about New York's Comstock Laws, a topic that speaker Hurt McDermott made tragically interesting. Anything to do with gambling was included under these obscenity and vice laws, but the Comstock Laws were not enforced in Chicago. Still, the author thought it best to remain anonymous. Speaker Richard Hatch gave a convincing argument that the author is none other than Edwin Sumner Andrews, though he did present other candidates, as well.

Why all this talk about a little card book? Well, it's never ever been out of print, not in 110 years, and it's still regarded as the best authority on card manipulation. It's been translated into Japanese, Spanish, German, Italian, and French. The basic book has remained unchanged, but has been published many times in many different forms, so there are lots of different-looking copies out there. Maybe someone needs to call The History Detectives.

There were also interviews of a couple of very old magicians, and it was fun to hear what their lives were like, back in the day. Celeste Evans, for example, is almost eighty, but has kept her sharpness and sense of humor. As a woman, she caught people's attention by being a novelty, but her differentness was a double-edged sword; her male counterparts were threatened, and she had to endure quite a lot of horrible rumors and various other indignities. She has some interesting stories to tell and one of these days I will read her book. Celeste maintains that it's not an autobiograhy--she won't write that book 'til the kids are dead (she has two middle-aged kids.)

There was also a tribute to the late Doug Henning, which included some great films and interviews.

On Sunday, it was off to the auction, which was held right down in Chicago in a little hot room in a very big warehouse building where we could hear people kung fu fighting upstairs. That's what I'm guessing, anyway. Ekim and I watched a few people part with thousands of dollars while three cameramen danced around the room. I noticed afterwards that there was a notice on the door warning us that they were filming a documentary, so anyone sitting in the room is at risk of being filmed. We weren't. Ekim did bid on three different bibliographies (his specialty), but nameless, faceless people on the internet outbid him.

Oh, well, the auction was over, so we walked around Chicago some more until it was time to catch the blue line for Rosemont again, collect our luggage, and fly away.

No, we did not get to see Aretha. Wow, I wonder how long those tickets had been sold out! We did start the weekend seeing The Hot l Baltimore, which was an interesting slice of life in a run-down, past-its-prime hotel building in 1973. It was a short walk to the Steppenwolf theatre, where there was an interesting exhibit in the lobby about what was happening that year, such as the top songs, new inventions, etc. It surprised me that airbags for cars were new all the way back then, since I'm pretty sure no one in my family could even find the seatbelts in our old cars. And bar codes? My hometown didn't have them for quite some time after 1973, if my memory hasn't become too truncated.

Anyway, it was all good! And that's the magic stuff for another couple of years.

Science fiction:Soft Apocalypse by Will McIntosh

2011-05-09T00:00:00.000-07:00

It's not hard for me to suspend my belief for a good read, especially if the genre is science fiction. And Will McIntosh's basic premise of the future breakup of society as we know it due to a meltdown of the world's economies intrigued me. Unfortunately, the details provided in McIntosh's novel were very fuzzy. In the beginning, we know that about 40% of all Americans are unemployed, and therefore there are large numbers of homeless people drifting around like gypsies, trading with each other the best they can before being run off by cops or violent locals. There is no help for anyone.

The story is told by Jasper, a young college graduate who is traveling with his "tribe," Cortez, Jeanne, Colin, and Ange. We don't know how long they've been wandering around Savannah, Georgia. At this stage, Jasper is very preoccupied with an affair he's having with a married woman--by phone. He's homeless, he doesn't have much to eat, but somehow, he's got a cell phone. And this Sophia, who is calling and meeting him around town in her car for brief visits, has a home, job, and a spouse who she is not going to leave. How and where could they have possibly met? No clue. It's a strange subplot without much purpose, other than to showcase their different lots in life. This could have been done in a more realistic way.

This strange relationship and the miraculous cell phone are early clues about how really silly this book was going to be. Jasper continues to think and do rather immature things, except when he's doing the impossible. There are some very violent and gross episodes in this story, which Jasper always somehow survives. There is even an episode when he performs an appendectomy on a teenaged girl. No, Jasper's not a doctor, but since he has his trusty cell phone, he calls a doctor who walks him through the process! We (the reader) never find out how that worked out for her, but the offending organ was indeed removed. Jasper had joined her tribe to pick some herbs and have sex with her, but after this episode, he hurried right on home.

Another subplot is referred to as the Daja Jihad, which was never really defined. There's Sebastian, who has some kind of infection in his blood called Doctor Happy, which takes all the fight out of people and makes them serene and--happy. He's out to infect as many people as possible. This reminded me of A Clockwork Orange. We don't find out until the end what Sebastian and his co-conspirators have in mind, exactly. This clandestine group is also planting a strain of insiduous and fast-growing bamboo everywhere for the purpose of slowing things down. I could try to explain that, but I'm not sure I totally understood the rationale myself.

This story seems to just ramble on, with violent episodes interspersed with insipid dialogue. In the end, the surviving tribe members are in such starved straights that they must join Sebastian's Doctor Happy commune--where food is plentiful because everyone works for the common good and everyone's infected with Doctor Happy. The fact that they stand outside the commune's walls, debating whether or not to join when they are sick and starving is the last of the horribly unlikely scenarios. What? You mean if I wanna eat, I have to get happy, first? No way! Let's go off for more violence and starvation!

Oh, brother, what a waste of time. Anyone who is in the mood for a better rendition of this type of story should read Margaret Atwood's books Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood. Much better choices.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I recently read my very first E.L.Doctorow novel, Billy Bathgate, and enjoyed it. At first, I was afraid that a coming of age story about a delinquent teenaged boy in 1935 wasn't going to be my kind of read, but then I really got into the story.

~~~~~~~~~~~~
Speaking of crime (that's a jump, forgive me), we rented The Town, but didn't see all of it because the DVD was faulty. Ekim and I both shrugged this off because so far, the plot was so unlikely that we were already disappointed, anyway.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We had such a beautiful weekend, and it looks like this coming week will be just as nice. This must be noted and cherished. We had a lovely Sunday visit with both of our mothers, too. I could not have asked for a better weekend.

How 'bout you?

Decompressing

2011-05-05T14:05:00.000-07:00

...becoming less compressed. Good word. Breathe. Arms are very heavy and tired, for some reason. Gravity is even working on my face. But, good news, the heart isn't thrashing around now. I'll go run a few laps around the neighborhood, that should make me feel better.

If anyone had been rude to me today, there might have been waterworks on the spot. Summer's coming, school will be out, I shouldn't be all alone in the lobby for hours any more.

And now, I'm home. It's sunny. And there's tequila waiting for me, after I go running. Cool.

Up. Getting up.

Tomorrow's the weekend!!!

Silence

2011-05-04T05:23:00.000-07:00

There's a lot to be said about being silent, and I'm going to try to be as quiet as I can today. Others have been complaining a blue streak to me about this or that, feeling unfairly used, etc, but--in reality, I feel that we've all been pretty equally used, and that everything is relative. I mean, there are pros and cons to everything, but if the cons take over, then by all means go elsewhere. Say your piece or peace or whatever, and so be it. I'm just going to nod, because it's the same old.

It's raining again, and I'm trying to come up with an "at least" statement about that, but alas, it stretches the creativity. We could have a bright, sunny summer, without a single raindrop, and not slide into drought. It could happen. I could go walking over break with my super-spiffy umbrella. That might be fun!

And see here, it's already Wednesday. If time has flown, then we must have had fun. We did. We had a ton of fun!

And Cinco de Mayo is also what Australians call a Bonza Bottler Day, since the month and date have the same numeral. So, we could have a party every month.

But now, it's time to go to work--happy Wednesday, everyone!

Rabbit, rabbit!

2011-05-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

Rabbit, rabbit! Good luck in May. Let's hope it's more flowers than rain, at least here in the east. Our watertable needs to calm down and settle itself or we'll be in soggy trouble. Let the western states have their share of the rain for awhile, especially the places on fire. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could share the weather? Just think, the kids in Mexico City could have a day of snow tubing in exchange for a pool day here...oops, gettin' a bit carried away.

May is here, but there's still plenty of Easter candy hanging around, since Easter didn't make its appearance until the last Sunday of the month, just one day shy of the latest possible date. Those are our Easter baskets. Ekim's is bigger because he needs more calories. Notice that we both, coincidentally, stomped into the same dollar store and bought the same little bunnies as toppers. It's also a remarkable coincidence that I picked a bunny that matched Ekim's basket and candy packages so well, because I was really looking for the gray one, which as you see Ekim did find for my basket. And I'm not good at remembering colors; I was simply going for the manliest color I saw (not pink, yellow, or lavendar).

May is asparagus month. Before you say blek, make sure you try it fresh and steamed. It's pretty good. Asparagus is also in the lily family--who knew? Well, maybe rabbits know.

Can't find the nap

2011-04-28T15:26:00.000-07:00

I'm too tired to nap. The weather was so unusually loud last night, plus it was too warm to sleep with the windows closed--and we eventually had to close the windows. What a storm. A twister touched down in York County and there was flooding, damage, and loss of power in various parts of the area.

We did get some wetness in our basement, but other than that, we are unscathed, except for the lack of sleep.

The sun is actually out now, so let's hope we dry out!

Winding Down

2011-04-27T16:53:00.000-07:00

I adore this cuckoo clock, but every once in awhile, I forget to wind it for a day, and so it stops. Very predictable. What's not so predictable is the time at which is stops, which in turn affects how easily I get it going again; I don't want to be moving the hands all the way around the clock, chirping cuckoo cuckoo cuckoo for each and every hour if it's going to be too long a trip.

It's going again, and I'm happy, because it seems to me that April should be over by now. Not that I have anything against April. That didn't sound right at all, did it? But seriously, it seems like there has been some lagging going on, not that I want my life to get here sooner, but--well, it just feels like the world has too many browsers open at once, or something.

I should've dyed eggs this year. I love hard boiled eggs.

Mort, by Terry Prachett

2011-04-18T14:27:00.001-07:00

It's a happy Monday because it's not raining. The sun is out, peeking through the clouds, and the temperature is very pleasant. We had a bit of an interrupted Saturday night when we discovered that while we'd both been sitting around reading all day, the nonstop, heavy rain was causing the water table to rise through the concrete of our basement. Thank goodness for shop vacs. When the water was finally conquered, we decided that it was too late to start watching a movie, and caught some of the new Upstairs, Downstairs instead. Oh, dear. This might be as addictive as Mad Men. As I say Ekim and I both did quite a bit of raining--reading! this weekend, and after reading such serious stuff, it was timefor a light humorous break, so the next book under the microscope is-- Mort, by Terry Prachett. In this installment of his Discworld Series, we meet Mort, a rural lad who is seeking some kind of apprenticeship or training for a future career, but is having trouble fitting in anywhere. His luck finally changes, though, when Death taps on his shoulder.

WHAT'S YOUR NAME, BOY?

Uh, Mortimer...sir.They call me Mort.

WHAT A COINCIDENCE...

Ah, don't worry; Mort doesn't die, but Death could use an assistant. In fact, Death is dead tired, beginning to question what it's all about, and would like to try something else, for a change. So, Death takes a holiday, and lets Mort stand in for him.

Unfortunately--and hilariously--Mort finds himself in some trouble right away, but he can't find his master anywhere. He doesn't know that Death is currently working as the fastest short-order cook Ankh-Morpork has ever seen, turning out menu items in the blink of an eye and lining the business with saucers of milk for all the strays (CATS ARE NICE).

Mort almost does some serious damage to the universe, and when his eyes start to glow strangely and he starts to talk LIKE THIS, he knows that events and changes are spiraling out of his control. Fortunately, Death does come to his senses and realizes that he can't live any kind of human life. Death has accepted his fate and all is swell in Discworld.

I must say, the funniest Discworld novels are those that take place right in Ankh-Morpork; it's an urban creation that is so ripe for comedy. Well, Pratchett would say that Ankh-Morpork is ripe in, um, much more immediately noticeable ways. This novel only has a few scenes in that most populated of Discworld cities, and those are the funniest ones. I was particularly pleased that Rincewind, a comically inept wizard, made an appearance in Mort. Rincewind must be one of the oldest characters in the series and it was fun to have him bungling around again. I must admit that I missed The Watch, though. Since not much of Mort takes place in the city, we don't get treated to Ankh-Morpork's finest.

Discworld. Always a world of fun.

Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel

2011-04-15T18:25:00.000-07:00

History is ever so fascinating, as long as the right person gets the job of telling it. Hilary Mantel's version of how King Henry VIII manages to declare himself the head of the English church is a captivating culmination of five years worth of research that will inspire any reader to learn more about English history.

The star of Wolf Hall is Thomas Cromwell, who Mantel depicts as a brillant thinker and a good person who tiptoes around his monarch to do both good for his country's government, while staying in the good graces of his king. He is the captain of compromise. Cromwell is the son of a commoner, son of a blacksmith who gathers a wealth of experience working in different industries in various European countries. By the time we meet Cromwell as a man, he is a multilingual lawyer who fully understands the law, banking, and the politics of Europe. He is also well versed in the scriptures, and it is rumored that he can recite the entire new testament from memory. Cromwell can argue any point and come out on top. Thomas Cromwell is, well, amazing.

Of course, he has his enemies, but during the 1530's, the decade in which this book takes place, Cromwell is at the top of his game, even earning an earldom, something unheard of for someone of such low birth. Mantel portrays many important people of this time period, gracing them with her novel impersonations of what they might have been like. Thomas More, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, William Tyndale, Anne Boleyn, Mary Boleyn, and all the rest. I was particularly interested to learn something of William Tyndale, since this is the first time I'd heard the name of the man who had first brought us The Bible in English. Much of Tyndale's wording survives to this day. He was eventually burned as a heretic, though Henry VIII was to encourage English translations of The Bible just four years after he condemned Tyndale to death.

Mantel's writing is also attractive; she doesn't write in the English of 1530, for it would be too hard for most of us to get through over 500 pages of that, but she does seem to adopt enough older phrases to make the narrative seem credible. Another quirk of her writing style within these pages was that the pronoun he, unless otherwise clearly stated, refers to Thomas Cromwell. At first, I found myself backtracking and reading passages twice, but once I got used to the rule that Cromwell was he with a small h, things were much clearer.

In the end, I feel as though I've had an inside peak at the lives of Henry VIII and his court during the 1530's, and it has become very clear why this very important decade was glossed over in junior high history class: there's too much sex, rumors of sex, and bloody, gruesome violence.

The narrative does not reach Ann Boleyn's untimely ending, much less Thomas Cromwell's. King Henry VIII is portrayed as a very volatile man who is too dependant on his advisors and not able to think clearly enough on his own. He (King Henry VIII) is a dangerous man to serve.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes historical fiction.

Here comes the sun...

2011-04-13T19:11:00.000-07:00

for at least a couple days before it rains again. And I should get to bed, so I can get up and run in the dark again.

Downhill to the weekend, folks. And that is always so psychologically important. (perchance to finish a book and mend some clothes and wax a car and--stuff)

Safe for now...

2011-04-09T06:47:00.000-07:00

April 7's rally wasn't one of the big ones, only about four thousand people, but it felt good to be there. Of course the threat of a government shutdown overshadowed anything else that was going on. Our numbers were good enough, though, to be noticed. And as usual, the weather was much warmer than I'd expected it to be. That's a tradition! We always end up taking our clothes off. The pink t-shirts were distributed at the rally, so we all had a thin layer to add after taking off our coats.

I did get to go with a group and watch the lobbying of Sen. Toomey--or rather, his very very new intern. In a cafeteria. This young intern stated that she hadn't even had a chance to familiarize herself with all of his positions. It appeared to be a head-spinning, back to the wall, terrorizing few minutes for her, even though we were as polite as we could be to her. We all felt sorry for her.

We'd wanted to visit Sen. Casey, but it just didn't happen because time was too tight, and there were so many ahead of us--as I say, we were enough to be a crowd. While we were roaming the Dirksen Senate Office Building, we got lots of thumbs up and thank yous from government workers, and that was nice. The only anti-PP group was small, enemic, and outside. It was a very peaceful day and the hardest part was finding our way out of the building afterwards. It's a labyrinth, unless I'm really from Kansas.

During the rally, my favorite speaker was Sen. Barbara Boxer, though everyone was good. That's how I spent my day off.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What else is going on in my fast-paced, exciting life? Well, I subscribed to the Nook version of The New Yorker and I love it. It's just three bucks a month and keeps me in interesting diversions. In fact, it's a challenge to keep up with. I'm also still reading Wolf Hall, which yes is long, but is also being preempted by the new stuff. The TBR pile is reaching new heights.

There was a humorous piece in March 28's edition about something called Going Outside. I suppose I should do that, it's shaping up to be a decent running day...Have a great weekend, y'all!

Rampage

2011-04-02T16:33:00.001-07:00

It's a better title than Vent, I think. Today was a demanding Saturday at work, let me tell you. If you won't let me, you'd better stop reading right here.

Since our branch is all glass (not much of an exaggeration), I see The Man with the Half Dollars get out of his car and think, shit, every time I work a Saturday...Mr. Fifty Cent hauls all these halves up to our change machine, boxes and boxes of them. He's always dressed as if he's just walked out of Joseph Banks and looks like he's spent much of at least the past decade in a gym. He's all business, and doesn't want this to take very long. However, before he brings me his receipt to be cashed out, he will insist that it's a dollar short, since he knows exactly how much he's put in there. I will be obliged to come out with the key and pull that blasted machine apart, put my hands in its dirty inards, and either find the half dollars or not. I find nothing, we find nothing. My supervisor comes up and does her own broken record routine about how the machine is tested twice a day, this is all we can do, and then she winds up giving him a ten dollar satisfaction check for his trouble. Which we have to run into the vault to get. And while we're in there, she says, he's a scam artist. I say, I don't really see how. It's a heck of a way to make--ten bucks? He seems OCD to me.

When we get out there, he's very gracious, and states that he really didn't want a ten dollar check, he just wanted it to be right, and here, he's brought us two enormous Hershey Special Dark bars for our trouble, yada yada. I deposit his special check and cash him out--in hundreds. Twenty five hundred. (After he ran out to his car to obtain that extra dollar change. In halves, of course.) I'm not charmed at all. Even if I could eat dark chocolate*, I wouldn't eat his. Even if he were both good looking and straight. I would have loved to just take that dollar difference and call it an even $2500, just to see his well-sculpted ass walk out the door.

Supervisor acted like she'd won something.

Little did I know that Fifty Cent Man would be among my easiest customers. The most difficult customer of the day was apparently very used to ordering others about. I'm guessing he's used to having an army of secretaries and underlings who have the pleasure of enjoying him on a regular basis. He had a $2950 check to cash and he needed it back in a very specific way. Now, write this down: I need an envelope labeled Katie with $100 in ones, $100 in fives, $200 in tens, and $100 in twenties. Next, I'll need an envelope labeled Ed which will contain $420 in fives, $420 in tens, and $360 in twenties. Then Don's envelope will have $100 in ones, $100 in fives, and $200 in tens. Then, there will be six envelopes for the cash prizes, and those amounts are $250, $200, $150, $125, $75, and $50. You can make those any bills you'd like.

Oh, how eye-rollingly boring: the teller's actually going to add up all the numbers to make sure they total $2950, as if he doesn't know what he's doing! He's checking the amounts as I do them, trying to tell me how to make this easier, ordering paperclips, rubber bands, and scotch tape. It was really rough, counting all that out while trying to ignore him. And, when we were finally done, he says, can you tell I've been in banking for twenty years? It was like the setup for a punch line I wasn't allowed to pronounce.

Before I left work, Supervisor said, you're not taking your candy?

I'll stop there. It was a busy day, then I came home and napped, and now I'm going to have popcorn and beer and forget about it. See? That was easy. Thanks for listening.

*to compound the headache

Rabbit, rabbit!

2011-04-01T03:25:00.001-07:00

Beware the April Fools Rabbit, and have an absolutely wonderful, exciting Month!

Last Wednesday of March

2011-03-30T11:54:00.000-07:00

Almost April, the cruelest of months, except for this here March. It's been a long March, huh? But after tomorrow, it's over. OVER for another year.

Did I really just walk out to the mailbox in my winter coat and flip flops? The coat was to hide the ridiculous flannel pajama top, but it's also still cold out there. The flip flops feel like the best thing for my feet just now because I have an infected, swollen sore. I stepped on a splinter. That seems like an easy enough thing to do, except that I found this splinter inside, on our very smooth hard wood floor, and then I proceeded to develop this infection, which seems like the utmost in carelessness. That's ten days of anti-biotics, foot soaking, and ibuprofen for finding a hidden hazard.

I'm also coming off of lexapro after coming to the realization that it's no longer doing anything for me and I'd rather just stop taking it. After reading tons of horror stories on the 'net about nausea, dizzyness, headaches, shakes, etc, I'm relieved to find that apart from an occasional strange lightheadedness, the withdrawal is going very easily. Good thing the dosage was a small one.

Those occasional lightheaded feelings could also be the new contact prescription, but--probably not. And about that, things are getting trickier. Oh, to completely correct the weak eye, or not? For correcting the bad eye completely might detract from my close-up vision. However, I think the most important consideration is safety: when I'm in my car, backing out of a parking spot, I want to be able to look to my weak side and have enough sight not to hit someone's kid. Or some kid's adult. So I'm sampling a compromise.

Speaking of parking lots, I can sit in the Barnes and Noble parking lot and use their WiFi just as well as if I were sitting in the store. This is wonderful, since they are just a hop skip jump away from my workplace, so I can pack my lunch, sit in their parking area, and sample or shop on my Nook.

And not to worry. I'm careful in the shopping center's tight lot, honest.

Wednesday

2011-03-22T19:00:00.001-07:00

Oh, just a little laugh on this Wednesday.

That is, just a wee little giggle to add to the fun, exciting, and epic times I know we're all having. Yippeeee

Funeral for a Dog, by Thomas Pletzinger

2011-03-20T05:39:00.000-07:00

Dirk Svensson has written a children's book called Leo and the Notmuch. It's a children's picture book about grief, and it's such a phenomenal hit that Daniel Mandelkern has been dispatched by his wife (also his boss) to interview Svensson and publish a nice, long profile of the man behind this incredible book.

Daniel Mandelkern is really an ethnologist attempting to be a journalist, and his wife, Elisabeth, is sure that Daniel is the perfect person for this job. In the end, it appears that she is right, but the results are not at all what she had in mind.

The beginning of this novel follows one man and then the other. The reader experiences the rich chaos of Dirk's mind, a sharp contrast to Daniel's reality. Afterwards, it focuses on Daniel's perception of Dirk and his zany life.

Dirk Svensson is indeed a very strange man, as Mandelkern experiences over and over again. Mandelkern arrives at a secluded Italian lake for an afternoon and somehow winds up staying four days, during which time he and Svensson have some very odd interactions and Mandelkern's only tangible information comes from two other people in his life, plus a manuscript Svensson has written that seems to be either an autobiography or a novel based on his life. Mandelkern reads this clandestinely; he must snoop and observe others very closely for every speck of knowledge. It did pay to be an ethnologist.

What does he find out? First, he meets Tuuli, who arrives with a small boy who may or may not be Svensson's son. She informs Mandelkern that everything Svensson says is made up, that he is just inventing a world that he can live with.

Then, Mandelkern keeps running into the name Felix Blaumeister. Who is he? He's obviously important in Svensson's life, but Tuuli will only tell him that Felix is dead, that he drank himself to death. She says nothing else about him.

From Svensson's manuscript, Mandelkern learns that Tuuli, Felix, and Svensson were very close friends, that they first came together as young volunteers in Brazil.

Why is Tuuli here now? She and Svensson do not seem to be particularly enjoying each other. Svensson has made a vague declaration that this is a celebration, of sorts. What is all this about?

And then, there is sweet, gentle, silent Lua, the big black mostly German Shepherd dog that has long been in Svensson's life. The first thing Mandelkern notices about Lua is that one of his front legs has been amputated, and not recently. Tuuli allows that she did the job, and that Lua would have bled to death had she not acted, but again, there is no rest of the story.

It is not until Kiki Kauffman arrives on the scene that Daniel Mandelkern gets the picture. Or perhaps I should say that she interprets the pictures, for she is his artist and mate. She likens Dirk, Tuuli, and Felix to borromean rings,

three rings that are linked until one is removed. There is a story behind Felix's death, as the reader surmises early on. And the story of how Lua came into their lives was an intense bonding.

And now, Lua is the one who is saying good-bye. The word celebration does not seem appropriate, but Dirk Svensson does need to mark this passage in a significant way that will also pay some homage to Felix.

And now, see, I'm crying. Funeral for a Dog is actually very subtle, not at all maudlin. I enjoyed the writing style very much. Meanwhile, as Daniel Mandelkern is finally making his way home, he realizes that he has found himself.

This was a freebie from The Early Reviewer program at LibraryThing, and a very memorable one.

Weekend Update

2011-03-09T16:37:00.000-08:00

With the promise of spring, I'm looking forward to a warmer week. But first, just a glance back at the week that was--

In world news, Japan experienced the strongest earthquake in history, strife and war continue in Libya, and a poor farming family in Perry County lost seven children to a fire, and the Westboro Baptist Church is threatening to attend the funeral. There is plenty of sad news to remind me how trivial most things are.

That said, we've watched yet another amazing documentary: Inside Job, directed by Charles Ferguson, the one that won this year's Oscar for Best Documentary. It's riveting, darkly fascinating stuff that is guaranteed to make its viewers very angry, and it ends with the disturbing revelation that those who caused the 2008 meltdown are still in power, and no real progress has been made to bring back the regulations that were in place before the 1980's. Everyone should see this, especially young adults. I hope some of them are paying attention.

On a daily basis, though, most of us are paying closer attention to our own little pieces of the universe, which is quite natural. My own itsy bitsy speck of space-time is rather boring, which leads to the following work-a-day observation.

Coolerwoman doesn't usually come into our branch, but we've all heard about her. She's got a shopping cart with a cooler in it, but she hasn't necessarily been grocery shopping. What's in the cooler? An urn. An urn with her late husband's ashes inside. He's been gone for quite some time, at least several years. Why does she carry it everywhere she goes? Didn't spend enough time with him while he was able to walk around himself? Afraid some other woman's gonna steal her man? Is she thinking that any day might be the magical day that she's meant to spread him around?

Dunno. It's just in my SHAKE IT ALL AROUND box.

What's in my IN box? I'm reading a very different kind of mystery. I think it's a mystery. I'll try to explain Funeral for a Dog next week. I can say that I am enjoying the style very much, and am really looking forward to figuring out what, exactly, is eating Dirk Svensson...

In my OUT box, a $110.50 ticket for failure to stop at that stop sign down the street from me. Damn. Last night, as it grew dark, I was sitting in the living room, just about to turn on the lights, when suddenly the room appeared to be lit up by a disco ball and a loud siren was going off. Someone heading towards our house was being apprehended. We don't have drugs in this neighborhood, oh no, we have--stop signs. Three in particular, at the three-way down the road, and you'd best know that, if you intend to visit these parts.

And it's getting late for a Sunday afternoon, so I'd best get off the toosh and use it up...

So, how was your week?

Weekend Update

2011-03-06T15:27:00.000-08:00

Aren't this nifty galoshes? Wouldn't you just wish for rain if you only had them? Hey. It's the little things. All this rain gives me a sleepy headache, but it's been a nice, relaxing two days, anyway. We watched the documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop last night and both really liked it, so--put that on your Netflix cue!

I also managed to finish another book, and my review follows.

Oh, and Ekim and I also scored a lunch with Mom and Dad at a nearby Thai restaurant. Eating: another great indoor activity.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This really is the first time I've picked up the original Frankenstein, and it was not at all what I'd expected, not one bit. Years ago, I'd seen a couple movies based on this classic, but neither version had much resemblance to Mary Shelley's original story. One of the most vivid scenes I can remember seeing in the movies was of Frankenstein's monster being chased by a band of villagers with torches, out to destroy this deformed creature, but nothing of the sort ever happens in the book.

Mary Shelley's story is the tragedy of a life brought into existence without any regard for that life; Frankenstein's monster does not even possess a name, much less the compassion of any other being on earth.

This novel actually begins aboard a ship, with the lonely Captain Walton writing letters to his sister, lamenting his extreme lonliness and lack of friends aboard his vessel, when suddenly, he and his crew spy a stranded man adrift on an ice floe. After rescuing this man, Walton becomes enraptured with his tale. Walton's new companion is none other than Victor Frankenstein, and his tale of woe is told in flashback.

Frankenstein's dissertation is full of remorse and uncertainty. His creation has already caused pain and despair to his loved ones, and now the lonely, angry being is demanding a mate, and Frankenstein vacillates on the morality of such an action.

The plot is still a meaningful one, though the style of Shelley's prose can get tedious and at times seems overly verbose--But then, it was written in 1818.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As usual, the weekend has flown by too quickly, but I have hopes that this coming week will be a pleasant one--here's hoping that you're all marching through March's weather with a smile in your heart!

Heh.

Rabbit, rabbit!

2011-03-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

March 1st is peanut Butter Lovers Day, so have an extra chunky yummy month! Evidently, it's also National Pig Day, when I suspect Homer says, "eat more peanut butter!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In other news, I've managed to finish another novel, this one a freebee from LibraryThing's early review program. In the Company of Angels, by Thomas E. Kennedy is a beautifully written novel set in Copenhagen, Denmark. Straightaway, that makes it a unique experience for me.

There are four different narratives, first and foremost, Nardo (Benardo Greene), a Chilean who has suffered physically and mentally at the hands of the Pinochet regime for about two years. He is now taking refuge in Copenhagen and being treated by a psychiatrist at the Torture Rehabilitation Center. We are given a window into the life of this psychiatrist, Thorkild Kristensen, who feels plenty of stress and self-doubt. Concurrently, we meet Michela Ibsen, a woman who will become intimately involved with Nardo. Michela's domestic life has exposed her to both emotional and physical trauma. When this novel begins, Michela is dealing with end-of-life issues for her parents and dealing with a very intense relationship with a younger lover, Voss. Voss is someone I'd describe as a sick puppy, a sort of "poor little rich boy" who has never felt loved or needed, and Michela has enough past experience and maturity to end this affair; he's a self-destructive young man with a mean streak. Meanwhile, Michela's father, Mikhail, is suffering mightily during his last days in a nursing home.

Believe it or not, Kennedy does provide enough humor in this intriguing journey to keep the reader from feeling the utmost despair. Nardo and Michela do prove to be a real love match, two people who instinctively know how to hold the other one up.

This is a beautifully written novel that addresses what meaning life has for us and what love is.

*This was a freebie from LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program:)

Last Day!

2011-02-28T06:38:00.000-08:00

The weekend went by too quickly, partly because I had to work on Saturday, something I haven't had to do in a very long time. Saturdays are different. Zany people come into the bank on Saturdays to use the coin counter, use the restroom, ask unusual questions, and leave their weird trash and stuff on the check writing station.

In fact, this past Saturday, someone actually called to tell us that he'd left his weird stuff on the check writing station. "Yo, I left a pepper on the back counter--man, don't let anyone eat that, cuz it's really hot!" Boy, am I grateful for that call, because I'm always eating stuff people leave behind on public countertops.* It's also a constant surprise, what people will actually tell you. A bus driver came in to cash his check and asked me, "this won't show up on my statement, will it? Can I just have my statement stopped? I don't want my wife to know how much I make." Oh, and then there was the guy trying to cash a check made out to himself and Charlene, but his joint account listed himself and Suzanne. He explained that Suzanne was his girlfriend and Charlene was his wife. And then someone tried to insert his two dollar bills into the coin counter, while someone else's kid thought that the ATM machine was the coin counter.

We should decorate the place to look like the circus it is. Big Top Saturdays!

Don't forget to do your Rabbitses tomorrow!

*Yes, there really was small pepper to be found on the check writing station.

Too funny. Really!

2011-02-25T05:40:00.000-08:00

A young coworker showed me this on his iPhone. On a slow day, honest! This not to be viewed at work, of course, unless you're working in a separate little room where no one knows what you're watching.

It is a special, new discovery for me that YouTube lets you just add stuff to your blog! This is very cool.

So many holidays!

2011-02-23T00:00:00.000-08:00

February 23rd is International Dog Biscuit Day, for some reason. What's the origin? No one seems to know. Why is "international" in the title? Not a clue. But, if there's a special dog or two or so in your life, I'm sure they'd enjoy breakfast in bed with fresh flowers and water in a nice goblet. Heh.

As Jonathan Swift said (a very, very long time ago), every dog must have his day.

Special thoughts today for Amber, who is spending some time wearing one of those awkward cones. Heal well, and may everything turn out to be okay.

Catch My Eye

2011-02-19T08:11:00.000-08:00

Ekim sent this video to me. It's the rabbits that made him do it. Lagomorph facination can be found everywhere, I suppose. This is really very cool.

There are some technically smart people out there, doing such interesting and wonderful stuff, but meanwhile, outside the science labs, there are also people causing social turmoil. The more I read about Wisconsin Mayor Walker's attempts to end all collective bargaining rights for unions in his state, the angrier I get. Of course the unions will have to bargain to accept some financial concessions, and they will cooperate, as long as they have the basic right to do so. And threatening to call out the national guard? This protest has been peaceful. Governor Walker's engagement of the national guard shows a complete disregard for the simple right to a peaceful protest.

And then there's the defunding of Planned Parenthood. It's incredibly short-sighted to end funding for birth control, health care for poor women, and STD testing. And by the way, plenty of men visit Planned Parenthood clinics to obtain STD testing and the free condoms. This is a sad mistake.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's no wonder that people need their constant sources of escapism, and there's plenty of white noise to go around: email, texting, iphone apps, facebook, insipid TV. Oh! According to my latest Entertainment Weekly (my only hope of keeping up with um, culture), the upcoming pilot season will include Civil War vets, Playboy bunnies, Edgar Allen Poe (as a detective?), and Wonder Woman. Yeah, let's keep those heads off current times and anything very serious, folks.

How'd you like the video? Cool, huh?

Anniversary Weekend

2011-02-18T12:37:00.001-08:00

Another year has gone by in the marriage of Acton and Ekim, and I can't really resist....

(I think Orleans must've retired on this song.)

To celebrate, we will be heading out to our favorite restaurant, Trattoria Fratelli, also known as The Brothers, or simply Trat Frat. It's hard to believe that it's been 22 years. It won't be long before we can say that we've been married half our lives!

Whoa, that carousel is going awfully fast...

Beautiful Sunday

2011-02-13T13:40:00.000-08:00

Mid-February, the temperatures are on the rise and there is a noticeable increase in daylight. Tomorrow's minor holiday forced me to get out of the house and shop. That's always good--the getting out part, at least.

Valentine's Day. We women are supposed to turn wicked if the attention we want wanes on this day, but honestly, I don't remember ever feeling especially wonderful or woeful about Valentine's Day. Now that I am paired off, it is a nice excuse to do something cheerful and different in the middle of February, and I certainly enjoy that. However, it's also a very commercialized day that can be a source of stress and hurt feelings for some. From obscure origins, Valentine's Day has become such a retail holiday that anything from candy hearts to diamonds go on sale for the big day. It's grown--exponentially.

Exponentially? Perhaps that's an exaggeration. You'll have to excuse me, if I have that word stuck in my brain. Ekim and I have just read Lev Grossman's article in Time Magazine, 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal, which addresses the fact that computers have become exponentially smarter and better, and that at some not-so-far-off date, we will have computers that are smarter than all the humans on earth combined.

Imagine a computer scientist that was itself a super-intelligent computer. It would work incredibly quickly. It could draw on huge amounts of data effortlessly. It wouldn't even take breaks to play Farmville.

So, what then? What will life be like? When I was a kid, I marveled at how Granny remembered some of the first cars, yet regularly flew across the country to see us. And she was zenfully calm about this, too. I remember thinking that there weren't that many changes left. Ha! That's funny, that I thought so small. Actually, it would be very hard for me to go back to school now, with all the changes there have been, and all the distractions added. It seems so strange, that there was no internet, all the time I was growing up, and music was just beginning to go digital. Back then, I read an article in Omni magazine about the coming of email--or whatever they called it back then--and thinking that this was going to be way cool. When I was in school, computer science majors pulled all-nighters in computer labs and there were huge mainframes.

How quaint. Email is becoming passe and cell phones deliver the internet in the palm of one's hand. It's incredible. And NO, we're not done with the changes, we're never, ever done with the changes. That was hard to fathom as a kid, but now it's hard to imagine anything else. Someday, when someone says, "what will they think up next?" the antecedent to that pronoun will be a machine.

Starting on Valentine's Day, a computer named Watson will be playing Jeopardy! And no, the questions will not be addressed to Watson with a keyboard, but in natural language. This will be fascinating.

Have a most engaging day, in your particular idiom.

Ice, Ice Baby

2011-02-02T10:53:00.000-08:00

The ice is melting so fast that it looks like it's raining and sounds like objects are falling down all over the place. What a cold, wet mess! And then it's going down to the teens tonight, so then we'll have more ice!

I shouldn't complain, because I'm not in Minnesota, Fairbanks, or any of the New England states, but--we got ice.

Rabbit, rabbit!

2011-02-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

Whoa! Well, would you look at that--it's already February. So, don't you forget to say "rabbit rabbit" this morning, which will bring you good luck--but better yet, don't you forget that Valentine's Day is in two weeks' time, as that might bring you even better luck.

Good luck in February, everybunny! It's gettin' closer to spring, so don't go mournin' January too hard or nuthin'.

Getting on with it

2011-01-30T05:21:00.000-08:00

Woohoo! We're almost done with January. It's reassuring that spring is ever closer, even if the snow is pretty. It will soon be easier for me to get outside, especially during my breaktime at work. We have a new teller who is inspiring a powerful and wondrous motivation in me to get out of the building for as much of that hour as I can.

Ah, yes, Dirigible has been with us a few months now, and she's never been in any danger of losing altitude. During her first few weeks, I didn't work with her much, but I did hear her. All over the building. The words BIRTH CONTROL kept wafting out into other rooms. Now that I work with her, she's moved on to MY STOMACH. It's not my wish to be mean-spirited, I do wish her well and hope that whatever problems she is having are diagnosed and treated, and not just because I'd like less scatological stuff in the conversation. Dirigible will always be an incessant, loud chatterbox because that's the way she is. Unfortunately, she also seems to be hard of hearing; she's waitressed in several nightclubs and bars during the last two or three years, and that can't be good for anyone's ears. I get to work with her in the drive-thru quite a bit, and I do wish she didn't sing along to the radio; she's comically off-key as well as loud.

Remember Lily Thomlin on Laugh-In, the way she'd just start talking, changing topics, going on and on and on without even taking a breath in between? Make that a bunch of decibels louder, and that's what I'm talkin' about. She went from the pain in her stomach to her birthday to what she ate and how it came out to how she doesn't so much like having a winter birthday to how most people in her family are born in September to listing every single birthday in her immediate and extended family and--

I forgot to mention the work LIKE. At this point, I have lost her thread, but I am trying to count how many times she uses the word LIKE in a minute. Don't worry; she doesn't notice me glancing at my watch. And sorry; I lost count. I'm pretty sure that if it were possible to bleep out the LIKES, we'd be able to sink Dirigible. Perhaps. Theoretically. In an alternate universe, where we could do that.

She's actually a sweet person, and I will rot for writing this....
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Our latest Netflix (as in last night) was Winter's Bone. It's one powerful but sad movie. The young actress Jennifer Lawrence was impressive in her role as Ree, an Ozarks teenager who is left to take care of her two younger siblings and her depressed mother while her father is in jail. To make matters worse, she learns from the local sheriff that her father has put their house and land, everything they own, up as collateral for his bail. And his trial is getting close and no one knows where he is. Ree shows herself to be tough, brave, and smart as well as desperate. She has been handed a life in which she doesn't have much of a chance, but there is no self-pity in her. She soldiers on. It's a film that deserves to do well at The Oscars.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
On the subject of entertainment, one of my young coworkers, SweetNerd, has this app for his iPhone that's pretty funny. I immediately thought that sister 3D would love this, but then I thought better of that; she could hyperventilate and die. Talking Tom will repeat anything you say.

SweetNerd also has an incredible music library on his phone, and when he plays old songs from the 70's and 80's, he'll ask me, "have you ever heard this one?" (Um, yeah). It's funny because he's always asking in earnest--really, he's not joking. He thinks that it's possible that I could have totally missed hearing Prince, Boy George, or Madonna. The other day, when Dirigible was trying to sing along with Boy George and it sounded something like Corna corna corna killi-iiion, you come and goo OoooooooOoo..., he misread my expression and said, "you don't know Boy George?"

By George, it's time to get on with the day! Cheerio folks, I hope your weekend has been fun!

The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy

2011-01-23T04:47:00.000-08:00

A pair of actors trapped in a recondite play with no hint of plot or narrative. Stumbling through their parts, nursing someone else's sorrow. Grieving someone else's grief.

Unable, somehow, to change plays. Or purchase, for a fee, some cheap brand of exorcism from a counselor with a fancy degree, who would sit them down and say, in one of many ways: "You're not the Sinners. You're the Sinned Against. You were only children. You had no control. You are the victims, not the perpetrators." *

Rahel and Esthappen are siblings, Rahel a little girl, Estha her brother. They are bright, imaginative children. They are two-egg twins, but sometimes they are Mrs. Eapen and Mrs. Rajagopalan, or Ambassador E. Pelvis (with a puff) and Ambassador S. Insect. A boy in his beige and pointy shoes and his Elvis puff, a little fairy in her airport frock with matching bloomers. A puff and a fountain in a love-in-Tokyo (which I believe is a long name for those little black rubber bands with two beads on the end that lots of us used to make pony tails, back in the 70's)(But I digress).

There are two very different tragedies in this story that come together and ruin the happy lives of Rahel, Esthappen, and Ammu, their mother, and a special man named Velutha. The adult world, with its infinite bigotry and violence, blames and punishes them all. Ammu, a divorcee who has returned with her children to her family's village, is already not very welcome, but then she has a secret affair with Velutha, who is from a lower caste. They break The Love Laws, which define who is to be loved, how, and how much, and they pay the highest price. Rahel and Estha are not spared the trauma, especially Estha; in another stroke of random unfairness, he experiences and witnesses more that Rahel does, and is made to feel very much to blame.

Arundhati Roy tells this story in a way that reminds me of water circling round a drain before rushing downward; the narrative moves back and forth in time and tells everyone's stories before the reader is given the details of the inevitable ending. It did take me some time to really get involved with the story, since the names, family relationships, and time-shifting style took some getting used to. In the end, though, I was awed by the writing and the story, and would highly recommend it to anyone.

*lifted from page 182.

Surprise!

2011-01-21T03:52:00.000-08:00

I actually thought about getting up before my alarm tweet told me! It's only 7am and I've already scraped that stupid coating of snow off the driveway and vacuumed the house! It's nice to be awake. Don't you wish everyone were?

New Year's resolutions are made to be broken, so I didn't make any. That said, though, my energy level and total motivation have been so lacking that I have set my sights on running just three miles every single day--it doesn't take half an hour, so it CAN be done. Once I've accomplished this, perhaps I can move on from that--or not. With my chronically achy knees, perhaps I should add other forms of exercise, such as strength training and stretching, instead of more running. I could evolve.

Ekim did not have a heart attack, by the way.

Sweet Sorrow

2011-01-18T18:38:00.000-08:00

Bleak, rain.

Only us; not much happening, out there.

Riot. Not.

Endless

Dead all around

One hour after another

Mindless

Oh, hey, wait! It's time to go sleep now. That I shall say good night till it be morrow.

peas and carrots

2011-01-17T00:00:00.000-08:00

As usual, I've forgotten what this was going to be about. A holiday postmortem, Or my Nook? Factoid: In the United States, anything published (in the US) prior to 1923 is public domain, which to me means that some of the best things in life are, yesindeedy, FREE. So far, I've read the first book in the Anne of Green Gables series by LM Montgomery, which was quite enjoyable, and Tinkers, by Paul Harding, which was last year's Pulitzer winner. Tinkers is a beautifully written short novel, but it surprises me that it won such an enormous prize.

Last day of a three day weekend. Didn't get anything accomplished, as usual. I'm napping way too much. In fact, I'm stiff from so much proneness. My random thoughts are, oh, I should get that song on iTunes! It would be good for the treadmill. Ever since the cruise, I've been habituated to the treadmill. And now I can't remember the song I wanted. Drat. Don't have much to do, but it fills my time. It's already midmorning, and happiness today is being days and days behind on LOL cats. It's a mystery, how I seem to have no time and all the time in the world.

Oh, yeah! I wanted Bad Reputation, by Joan Jett. They never play that one on the radio.

Other people are out there, snow tubing, skiing, snow shoeing, but I'm in here, hiding. Sleeping. Not even getting much reading done. It's really quite pathetic. Perhaps I'll buy some new tunes, put them on my iPod (I'm attached to my iPod), and run laps around a nearby development. So much for those really long, rambling runs I used to take. That's years behind me, now. I really should get out of the house. It's cold, but I got all these clothes. It'll be refreshing. And when I'm done, I can come in and take a hot shower and sit around again. It's a plan.

Meanwhile, the squirrels are out there, effortlessly chasing each other up and around trees and across the yard. Not a care in the world.

It's easy for me to see beauty out there, it's just hard to get out in it. But--here I go...

*Above picture found here.

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Rabbit, rabbit, Happy New Year!

2011-01-01T05:31:00.000-08:00

Gee, this must be the year of the rabbit. It's back! If you were born in 1915, 1927, 1939, 1951, 1963, 1975, 1987, or 1999, you're a rabbit person. (I'm a rabbit, are you a rabbit?)

I mean to write more than that sometime, I really do, but for now, suffice it to say, RABBIT RABBIT! Go at it, have a great year!

*it's hard to believe that people born in 1999, party like it's 1999, are in middle school now. Cowabunga.

Pretty Cocky

2010-12-21T08:26:00.000-08:00

Everytime we visit Key West or any of the islands, I'm reminded of the funny childhood notion I had that roosters only crow at daybreak. Of course, in reality, they only start crowing at daybreak, after which they never shut. up. until they drop off into a fowl dreamland.

This guy lives on Coco Cay, and I suppose my staring brought him struckin' right up to me (she wants me), so I took his picture. They do pose.

This guy lives in Key West. He looks a little scrawny. All the faster when crossin' the road (out of boredom, I suppose).

Here is a really good rooster joke:)
This one isn't bad, either.

Home again

2010-12-20T12:26:00.000-08:00

One of the first things I did after unpacking, doing laundry, and deleting weird email was to look through our pictures. Then, I started to put some of them on Facebook, but gave that up. I'm sure to have more success updating my reading adventures.

The Gathering, by Anne Enright, is a dark novel told in first person by Veronica Hegarty, who is mourning her brother Liam after his suicide.

In the process of trying to come to terms with what has happened, Veronica ruminates over the past two generations of her family's history, imagining the lives of her grandmother Ada, her husband Charlie, and their landlord Lambert Nugent, who may also have been Ada's lover. The past is a blur, and in fact everything seems to be blurred--past and present, conjecture and fact.

Veronica and Liam were born into an Irish Catholic family in Dublin and were very close, both emotionally and chronologically, which in this case means "eleven months apart." They were middle children in a brood of twelve (there were also several miscarriages). I probably don't have to actually point this out, but they were poor and crowded. Included in Veronica's murky memory is the year when she was farmed out to her grandparents' house along with Liam and younger sister Kitty. We know that their mother "Mamie" is in a permanent fog of some kind and was knee deep in child rearing at the time. Veronica's bitterness about having parents who hardly knew their children is evident, as well as being sent to live in a house where they are viewed as "in the way" and treated like charity cases.

Despite the fact that Veronica is so melancholy and serious, she does show a a very funny dry sense of humor at surprising times. It's a gift of comic relief for Enright's readers, because eventually what follows is a memory of what probably happened that year, when she and Liam were 8 and 9 (respectively), as well as a trip through all of her guilt feelings about why she wound up with a comfortable, middle class life and her brother didn't. Veronica is in a secure marriage, a homemaker and mother of two daughters, but her emotional distress is threatening to do real damage to her family life. There is so much about the past and its effect on their lives that is simply unknowable. There is no why, there is no answer to the question, "what led Liam to do this?"

I'm not sure how to interpret the ending, but I hope that in the end, Veronica does fall back into her settled life, to her loving and deserving husband and daughters. She's come frightfully close to running off, though. Too close.

The Gathering is a grim but fascinating journey, I'm glad to have read it, but it's not for everyone. I found the style to be pleasingly literary while still being very assessable.

The end. Individual interpretations may vary. Ha.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Vacation was very nice and relaxing. Ekim won six out of seven Scrabble games, though I did manage to stay close to him a couple times. On one of these occasions, however, Ekim's very last move in a very close game was a BINGO. He went out on a bingo. And when he's finished the gory task of adding up all those points to the left, right, up and down, then adding 50, silly me thought, that's that. Oh ho, I forgot: I had seven tiles on my rack to subtract from my score. THEN it was over. That was a bit of a downer, but we had some lovely days in Key West, Nassau, and Coco Cay. It was freezing in Charleston, but it's not a long walk to the brewpub and it's always excellent drinking weather.

And I'm sitting here, still sort of rocking.

Soon. Very Soon.

2010-12-07T15:23:00.000-08:00

It's a good thing I'm getting a vacation soon. My attitude needs that annual adjustment. Oh, boy, here comes Santa Claus. No, really, he's out there on a Fire Engine, but it's too cold to go out. Not that I would, anyway. Tricks are for kids.

Anyway, when I'm at work, being alternately bored and annoyed, I need to think about the wonderfully sweet couple George and Mary I ran into shopping this weekend. They worked at the same Asylum Warehouse I did, just in a different part. Anyway, they are working at Amazon now, another warehouse job that is a longer drive to work than I'd like, and they are working long hours. Both seem really happy, but tired. Mary has a beautiful attitude for someone with so many health problems. She worked at The Asylum for 30 years, standing up all day on concrete, and she's got some real joint pain. However, her dangerous problem is the bloodclot in her leg. And she just had a gallstone operation. But she's so happy. Partly, it's George; she met him at The Asylum and it's hard not to smile around George.

And I've been annoyed at my decidely cushier job. Oh, it doesn't pay as well, but Ekim and I agree that I'm not driving that far and working that many hours. Yuk. It may be annoying to work with less mature people, and sometimes it's a little lonely. I feel like The Other One, sometimes. And it took me a long time to get trained to do some things, since They do like to work with and help Their friends. That's natural. Happens everywhere. If that's all I have to complain about, that's not much.

That's what vacation is good for: those petty little stupid itchy nagging annoyances. There's always at least one person at work who whinges and drags his feet. We have two: someone who can whinge until I think, alright, I'll do it...and then there's always a certain young man who just drags his feet until I get frustrated and do darned chore myself. See, this is my fault. But now, it's vacation time! I have days and days to get over this and return with a sunny attitude, because it's really not important.

Speaking of sunny, we are not going to have optimal weather again this year. It's colder than usual all up and down the coast, and we're really not going that far south. I keep thinking of this as a Caribbean cruise, but we'll actually be in the Bahamas, still in the Atlantic Ocean. Anyway, we'll have a relaxing time.

Heh. While I'm gone, I'll be getting out of one of our infamous store tours. That's when back office bigwigs come and tour the branches, when all our lollipops, dog treats, and pens must be facing Mecca and no clutter shall be on the spotless counters (clutter includes staplers, tape dispensers, and teller stamps. They are clutter). I was surprised to see (silly me) that the requirements for our tiny kitchen/break area include the mandate that the coffee pot must match the refrigerator. Whew, both of ours are white. Nothing else may be on the counter except for soap and hand sanitizer.

As I say....it's nice to get away.

You Know When the Men Are Gone

2010-12-06T00:00:00.000-08:00

Seldom do I finish a book in one or two sittings, but I did so with You Know When the Men Are Gone, by Siobhan Fallon. These eight short stories depict the lives of the soldiers and the left behind wives of Fort Hood, Texas. The wives have various ways of dealing with the stress, worry, and pressure of keeping their families together by themselves, while their husbands dream of coming home and live for that phone call.

Fort Hood is a world within itself, and the families circle together closely, acting as a temporary family, supporting each other. They live under the same rules and are in many ways a tightknit community. Despite the closeness and support, though, they are also isolated from the outside world and tend to move on every couple years. The future is never certain.

Each story has a different narrator and its own sets of stressors. One story takes place in Iraq, but the rest happen in Fort Hood. Some stories are told from a wife's point of view, some from the soldier's, but all show extreme emotional anguish. Some kind of doubt haunts them all, and none of the stories are resolved. Fallon has left them open-ended, for our consideration. I found them all riveting. Once I'd started a story, I couldn't put it down. A great book for discussion, and I would recommend it to anyone.

* I received this book from LibraryThing's Early Reviewer's program.

Family Matters, by Rohinton Mistry

2010-12-05T05:48:00.001-08:00

Family Matters, by Rohinton Mistry, is a book that seems to move along at a slow pace, despite the fact that there is so much going on. Professor Nariman Vakeel, the elderly patriarch who has had so much sadness in his life, is now left alone with his haunting memories as he succumbs to Parkinson's Disease. His stepson Jal and stepdaughter Coomy live and care for him in the palatial flat where they have lived since Nariman married their mother, Yasmin. Unfortunately, there is some deep resentment and bad blood, especially in Coomy's heart, for she blames Nariman for her mother's unhappiness. She also feels some jealousy toward her younger sister Roxanna, suspecting that Nariman has treated his only natural child more favorably.

So, Coomy finds a very deceitful way to foist the care of her elderly father onto Roxanna, her husband Yezad, and her two young sons, Murad and Jehangir. Since they live in a tiny flat, this is a great hardship for them, and money is tight. In the process of dealing with this predicament, Roxanna and her family become closer and learn from each other in ways that forever change them.

Meanwhile, Yezad is facing other challenges at work, and his actions affect others' lives in unforeseen ways. Also, Coomy's efforts to keep up a lie also have drastic and sad consequences. There's a lot of deceit going on, and it becomes a fascinating, tangled web.

The magic of this novel by Rohinton Mistry is that the characters are so multilayered. No one is all good or all bad. The sad ironies in life simply are, and I felt something for all the characters. Along the way, I cried at some places, and in the end, I felt real frustration and concern.

This story takes place in 1990s Bombay, with its religious bigotry and the corrupt government that effect everyone's lives.

Family Matters would be a great book to discuss in a group, actually. I highly recommend it for being thought-provoking and real.

Rabbit, rabbit!!

2010-12-01T03:19:00.000-08:00

Good luck in December, everyone! Don't hurt yourself, up on that ladder stringing those lights. Don't get into an argument over where the tree lives or which side is its best. And if you really don't want your spouse to keep hanging that ugly ornament, don't fight about it--let him/er hang it up, then simply spirit it out to the trash when no one's looking.

Happy Christmas spirit, everyone!

Shopping

2010-11-29T00:00:00.000-08:00

It can be really hard to decide what to get certain people for Christmas.

Other times, it's obvious.

But it's usually either not obvious, or not affordable to do the obvious. For example, the poor girl using a bra to hold her cell phone in place looks even crazier than she would if she were ranting and raving at an invisible friend, possibly complaining about the strange contraption sticking out of her ear. But do you know how much a Bluetooth costs? Me, neither. (What is the plural of Bluetooth?) And the guy on the tricycle? Huh, he still has his streamers! Obviously, he hasn't even earned a new bike, even if his parents could afford to give him one.

So, what now?

It's around this time of year that I really miss Dave Barry's Christmas Gift Guide. One of the most memorable gift ideas Dave promoted was the bumper dumper. Do I know anyone who would appreciate this? Um, no. In fact, I'm not even sure anyone has ever taken Barry's advice on this one, but it sure is something to ponder. I mean, that it's a real website.

And then there's the educational sperm snowglobe.

Here's a gift that is both fun and educational for the youngster on your list. Basically, this is a snow globe, but when you shake it, instead of artificial snowflakes, there are artificial sperm cells swimming around....

In the middle of the globe is a model of an egg cell, which is being penetrated by one of the sperm cells, whom we will call Mr. Lucky. The manufacturer describes this as ``a great visual for you teachers trying to explain the reproductive process.'' We're sure it is! We can easily picture youngsters learning a lot from this and even discussing it with their parents.

FIRST PARENT: What did you learn in school today?
CHILD: Mr. Johnson taught us about sex.
SECOND PARENT: Really? How?
CHILD: He shook his sperm globe.
FIRST PARENT: I'm calling the police.
(excerpt from Miami Herald, 12/06/2009)

Oh, wait! This one is still available for $19.95, just click here. Trust me.

Indeed, some of Barry's suggestions would provide the priceless gift of laughter. Well, unless the recipient is prone to hyperventilating hysterical fits of laughter of a near-fatal nature . You do need to match these gifts with the proper person. But really, who wouldn't get a chuckle out of the nose shower gel dispenser with suction cups that stick to your shower wall? Or the Psycho shower curtain, OR the talking flyswatter? Ah, doesn't that one sound fun!

Seriously, though, in these economically rough times, a lot of people don't have extra money to play around and laugh with. Gifts should at least have a purpose, like the stuff at ThinkGeek.com. Fun and useful!

I won't say anything more, or I might let the cat out of the bag before Christmas...

Of course, I'd have to wake him up, first. I think my secrets are safe.

The Day Before the Plunge

2010-11-24T00:00:00.000-08:00

Banker's hours? That's a quaint concept, from when bank tellers were men, and a multitude of people lived their whole lives without knowing much about bank accounts. And bank robbers were desperate men on the run after the Civil War. We live on another planet now. Bank robbers now are usually quiet note-passers, but a bank very close to the one where I work actually had an armed man jump the teller line today. So begins this holiday season, on our present day planet, with its own desperate people.

Ah, yes, Thanksgiving Eve is upon us. It's not a school night. Most of us can stay up late, as long as we're not traveling any great distance to meet our families and eat all that food. It's the most popular night of the year to go out.

Those of us who meet the public are bracing ourselves. Where I am, we are starting the holiday season short-staffed. I'm not expecting tomorrow to be easy. However, I am expecting the day to end at the usual time. The lobby doors will be locked at 6:10pm, those of us not working the drive-thru will count our beans, put away our toys, and go home. Yay.

Thanksgiving is one of the four--yes, only four--days a year all the bank tellers at MyBank get to stay home, with pay, without using PTO. So, it's sort of sacred. We'll have a blessed day, then return to work on Black Friday.

Let the fun begin.

Eleven more work days until I'm on vacation. Then, I'll be back for Christmas Eve, but I won't borrow a rude awakening, just yet.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Have a great weekend, everyone! May it be safe, relaxing, and joyous.

Weighty Issues

2010-11-21T08:17:00.000-08:00

Ever since I started purchasing music from iTunes, I've been worried about what will happen when we get a new computer. I'll have to back up all those purchases, I suppose, on a CD. I could also store some of my music on my ipod and transfer them the other way...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Several years ago, in 199?, I went to a podiatrist and got custom orthotics, and now those orthotics sure do need resurfacing. Refurbishing. And Ekim just got me new running shoes (he was out shopping and saw my shoes on sale, and got them. My current shoes are in bad shape.) Since I'm making this shoe transition, it's really tempting to just give up the orthotics, because really, I'm not sure they ever really did much for me, and having them repaired will take at least two weeks. Heck, after two weeks, I might be accustomed to their absence. And once you put orthotics in a shoe, you're committed; they make such a heavy indentation in the shoe. It seems to me that the nightly ibuprofen is probably all I need.

Must be nice to be so swift of foot and not need running shoes. Roadrunners cross the road to get to the other side as quickly as possible before scary predators get them. This one's going to relax with a nice, tasty whateveritis he has in his mouth. And yes, I've heard of Christopher McDougall's book, Born to Run, about the Tarahumara Indians, but I will never ever be a barefoot runner. I might check out the book, though. It sounds incredibly interesting, and I understand it is a now a movie.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That reminds me: I should get up and take the new shoes for a whirl.

Let It Be!

2010-11-16T14:47:00.000-08:00

Um, or let it purr... something like that. Actually, today looks like Let It Rain! And rain, and rain, and rain...good thing it's not cold enough to snow.

And yes, one of the big stories today is the Beatles deal with iTunes. Many people are saying "about time!" and smirking, "It should happen before all their fans die."

Well. That's not going to happen for a very, very long time. However, I do agree that it's surprising how long it took for this to happen. I don't need to buy them, of course! I've already copied all our Beatles CDs, one by one, onto our computer.

I have enough music on our computer now that I actually have to start making decisions about what to put on my ipod. This time, I tried just choosing a bunch of Genius mixes and letting the program choose the rest randomly. Interesting; out of all that Fab Four stuff I have goin' on, just three are on my device now! It seems that Beatles songs don't appear on any of those generated mixes.

So. It's a dismal day here. Whatchaupto?

pets, poison, peanut butter, and redemption Sunday

2010-11-14T04:38:00.000-08:00

The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver, has been on my TBR pile for such a long time that I'd almost forgotten about it. It was only when I heard Maureen Corrigan reviewing Kingsolver's latest book that I felt a sudden, dire need to read the first book. And shame on me, but I have two more novels by this author that I'd picked up years ago and haven't touched. I might be a hoarder.

Barbara Kingsolver's first novel is indeed riveting and thought-provoking. In 1960, Nathan Price, a Baptist minister from Georgia, takes his wife and four daughters on an ill-advised trip to The Belgian Congo, with the hope of spreading the word of Jesus. Unfortunately, Rev. Price is too arrogant to look and listen to what is going on around him. While his daughters and wife are picking up the local language and having life-changing revelations, he is stubbornly trying to baptize people who have valid reasons for fearing the idea of being dunked in the water. So much is lost in translation, and his daughters and wife know this, but can't reach a man who has become despicable and abusive.

The most powerful thing about this novel, for me, was that the fear and desperation felt by Oleanna and her daughters Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May was not lost in translation. When it becomes obvious that they really should leave, their father refuses, so they are stuck. At this point, the story gets downright scary, and this story becomes an urgent read. I dreaded the future for all of them. They are no longer getting any outside help, they have no money, and Rev. Price is not popular. Nevertheless, their poor neighbors do what they can for them; no one wants to see them starve.

This situation had to come to a head, and it did so with a tragedy; poor little Ruth May, after surviving a prolonged illness with malaria, is killed suddenly by a poison snake. I worried about Ruth May the whole time, but this turn of events was a shock. At this point, Orleanna is compelled to act drastically. She feels guilty for so much. With strength she never had before, she drags all their possessions out of their house for the neighbors to pick through, gathers her daugthers and what little she needs, and they make the long, long trek to Leopoldville on foot, where somehow, someway, they will make it out of there. None of them even glance back at Nathan Price.

The Price family is never to be together again, and its members are deeply changed. Each of the three surviving daughters builds a life around what they have taken away. It is not even possible to imagine what their lives would have been, had they stayed in Georgia.

The Poisonwood Bible is about so many things! The corrupt, greedy European and American powers that purposely keep African nations in debt, that set up puppet governments that they can control, and imprison anyone for speaking out against them. The arrogant missionaries and businessmen who use the Congolese people for their own purposes, and of course the appalling racism. Personally, for the Price women, the religion that was the centerpiece of their lives before looks different to them now.

It's a powerful tome. My only criticism is that some parts at the end of the book seem to be longer than they should be, so that the pace felt like it was dropping from urgent to languid. However, I thought the ending, with Ruth May's voice, was very effective. This is a very important story and I'm glad that I finally read it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In other news, we have a new pet! She lives in the garage. Mike feeds her peanut butter every day, in the bottom of a springloaded trap. As long as we keep her fed, I think that she will not try to get into the house.

This reminds me of a Beatrix Potter story, The Tale of Two Bad Mice, in which Hunca Munca (pictured above, wearing clothes stolen from the Lucinda doll) and her husband, Tom Thumb, steal all kinds of stuff from a dollhouse. Tom finds coins to leave in the doll's Christmas stockings and Hunca Munca comes every morning to sweep the dollhouse, and thus they are redeemed. And they avoid the mousetraps the Nurse puts out for them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Have a great Sunday! It's beautiful out there, around here.

Happy Birthday, Doug, whereever you may be...

2010-11-12T00:00:00.000-08:00

Happy 41st birthday to the guy who decided to let Ambrose sleep, and thus put a hole in the middle of the blogosphere. But that's okay. We'll manage to soldier on, somehow. Eventually. I mean, someday.

Have a great day, Doug!

Birthday and stuff

2010-11-10T06:00:00.000-08:00

Lots of us think a lot about decluttering. Neglected clothes, forlorn books, worn-out appliances, games we never play anymore, unwanted jigsaw puzzles, and odd parts of stuff we can't even identify. Leftover paint, stained towels, paraphernalia of dropped hobbies. Knick-knacks that no longer know love or purpose. All these items now live in the basement or attic of our houses and minds.

Someday, though, there will be less clutter. We'll have all our music stored on computer and Ipods, and read the latest books on a Kindle or some such electronic device. Oh, but wait--books and music are my favorite parts of clutter. In fact, I'm not sure I'd call them clutter.

Well, okay, okay, if it's not the least bit organized, then it's just wrong. But of course our music and books are organized. I had nothing to do with this, of course.

But one part of our clutter is old photo albums, and this collection has not grown in quite awhile because we don't bother printing anything. We just POST it. And I thought CDs were so much more compact that LPs, but now we don't really need to buy those, either, if we don't wanna. iTunes has everything. And board games? I'd bet those sales have gone down, down, and down since video games became a national obsession.

Modern technology (computers) have freed up our files and shelves. What will we do with our new found space?

Well, look what happened: it took me so long to finish this little entry that now it's Mike's birthday! And speaking of stuff, he got a really big new (OLD) magic book for his collection, and he is busy consuming it as I type. He also got Jack-o-lantern smidgens in whatever dark chocolate flavors I could find, since they are on a fantastic sale right now. Mike adores a good sale, and this particular one has become a tradition.

There's always room on the shelf for another book.

All because I followed a tangent...

2010-11-07T09:56:00.000-08:00

It's incredibly lucky to live in such a safe place.

Imagine, all manner of things could happen to us in other places.

The lawlessness in some places would sure be scary!

It's also a blessing that we respect and take care of our natural areas and parks.

We also have more leisure time than most people on earth--to have fun!

And it's such a good thing that we have such a high literacy rate.

We also have freedom of speech, and our elected officials listen to us.

And we all try so hard to be considerate of our neighbors' feelings.

So it seems that we really shouldn't complain...

HA! That's just crazy talk. Like we're gonna stop complaining about the weather, the traffic, other people's manners, the price of gas, the price of food, the price of clothes? Oh, and I forgot about work--that's a rough one, because no one wants to go work, but no one wants to be without it, either. And not having enough time for car trouble, homework, being sick, cooking dinner, going to meetings, or exercising. And not wanting to get up today, do laundry, vacuum, take out the trash, or repair stuff.

However, we must remember that it is our good fortune to be able to better ourselves in any way we'd like.

This takes time, of course. Rome wasn't built in a day.

2010-11-03T18:49:00.000-07:00

The more I try to get some sleep, the more tired I am. Those who are loaded with energy are the ones who seem to use it all up. This is not as ironic as it seems, at first. It's the constant motion that trains one to have more stamina. I've been trying to lose my stamina with all this lying around, and I've been pretty successful.

Work. A boring vent for another day.

Taking an aimless run in a different place, where I have no mental mile markers is liberating. Just me, different scenery, and my watch. Time is all. It really is. My god. And the absence of mile markers is liberating because it frees me from confronting how much slower my body is moving these days. It's really not important.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In bookish news, Mom recommended a book to me which I enjoyed, called The Lace Reader, by Brunonia Barry. I read it without knowing anything about it, I didn't even read the dust jacket. It's my way of having a little magical mystery tour, and little did I know, but this was a mystery. What's a lace reader? Someone who can tell fortunes by looking into lace. That's the short answer, and only the backdrop of this story. Brunonia Barry has created a unique and page-turning story that I quite enjoyed. Thanks, Mom:)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~``

Our bookgroup had an unusually long and stimulating conversation over Riddley Walker that made me want to read it again, sometime.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We also had a very nice get together at a friend's Halloween party, and I got to spend time with Casey, a formerly abused pitbull Deb and Steve adopted from the Humane Society. They asked for the nicest dog no one wanted, and they came home with this loveable lady. She is a bit anxious and sometimes skittish, but you have to adore her, even during her funny moods.
Here's looking at you, Casey!

Day is done.

2010-11-02T18:18:00.000-07:00

Day is done, always too soon. I wanted to read more, meant to play more, perhaps even write of whatever thoughts crossed my mind today. Ah, but they were fleeting, and those thoughts are done with me, too. Day was fast this time, and it's foretold that tomorrow will be, too.

There are get togethers to tell about, pictures to show, books to comment on, but the fact is, I'm beyond sleepy right now. It seems that I can't get enough of that drug called snoozing, and it's worse lately, perhaps because of the change in weather and the encroaching darkness. There is hard-core yawning going on, over here.

So, good night for now. Sweet dreams, everyone. Wake up refreshed for the middle of the week.

Rabbit, rabbit!!

2010-11-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

October flew by so quickly, too quickly, like a bunny out of--no. October flew by like a bunny with Pegasus wings. Very, very, fast, barely dipping down to mow the clover as it flew by.

November! This is pretty much the start of the 2010 holiday season. My favorite thing about the holiday season is visiting family, going to parties, and eating. My least favorite parts are putting up the tree and Christmas music. I'm tired of both of those things. This makes that cruise we take in mid-December an extra superdooper treat with sprinkles on top for me; we flee to warmer weather, someone else has done the decorating (which I do appreciate as lovely), and the holiday-themed music is bearable, which in this case means, "tasteful and minimal."

The darkness of winter is not something I particularly look forward to, but will try to make the best of it. After all, time does fly like Rocky the Squirrel; everything's over before we've had a chance to react to it.

Whoa! Why mention winter already? We're not even done with the fall.

Do excuse me. And do remember to rabbit, rabbit! Good luck in November, everyone.

A little post-it note

2010-10-31T10:15:00.000-07:00

Just in time for Thanksgiving...

2010-10-24T09:37:00.000-07:00

At the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. recently, Jonathan Safran Foer stated that he did not write this book as a case for vegetarianism or to pronounce eating animals immoral, but he certainly does make a good case for both in the pages of his latest book.

Eating Animals is well-written, fact-filled, and fascinating. Foer tries to present our culture of eating meat from many angles, but does conclude that virtually all of the meat and eggs we consume are the product of factory farms, which are horrible for our environment in many ways and cruel to animals. Eating animals bred and slaughtered in the factory farm system is also detrimental to human health. For instance, chicken and turkey are routinely given antibiotics, and this has become a contributing factor in the evolution of resistant pathogens. This has been a concern since the early 1960's, but it was a new factoid to me.

The facts in Foer's book are downright scary and appalling. I have already read Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser, which was eye-opening, but had a different focus. Schlosser detailed the plight of the humans who work in the meatpacking facilities and went after corporations that put profit above human welfare. Eating Animals focuses more on animal welfare and the global environment, which in turn affects the lives of all people and animals.

Foer successfully made me angry about what the farm factories have done and also shocked me with statistics of how animals are treated. I was also surprised to learn that there are vegans and vegetarians who are working to help the few small animal husbandry farms compete with the factory farms. That is, there are plenty of people who have made the personal decision not to eat animal products but who are working to change the way people eat for the sake of health, environment, and animal welfare.

I would say, read this, and then pass it on. We should all at least pause to think about what our country's corporations are doing to us and the rest of the world.

Next!

2010-10-18T05:48:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I've played Next Blog, and boy, have things changed. Facebook is to blame, surely, for all the random-type blogs, such as this one, to have become almost extinct. Now, it seems that perhaps 80% of all blogs are baby blogs, which are only interesting if you know or have an interest in the featured baby. There are still some poetry blogs, and some book blogs. I stumbled upon one that I'd never seen before and it caught my eye because this blogger has already read 100 books this year. Then I saw her list, and thought--she reads a lot of really bad stuff, but still! She read 100 books. None of which would appeal to me, though, so--next!

Trading Spaces: Goldfish Bowls. Gee, fellas, the water in the next bowl really isn't any cleaner. Of course, if your bowlmate is driving you nuts, well, he's driving you nuts. Hopefully, there really are lots of fish in the sea. Too bad you're not there.

Seriously, though, when two goldfish just trade bowls like this, they are actually trading lives. Yes, life looks pretty much the same in both bowls, but it does matter who one is sharing it with. The only other difference might be a very small change in perspective, physically. Perhaps the one on the left sees a bit more sunlight. This may or may not be important to one's mood.

The above fish are murmuring something--ah, yes, I must be tired, or restless, to even be speculating about their business. For all I know, they leap from bowl to bowl on a dare or just for excitement every once in awhile. Don't we all do pointless things for a bit of fun?

Gotcha!

2010-10-17T05:43:00.002-07:00

Those word verifications we use here on Blogger and many other sights to keep out spammers are under attack. What a surprise. Those word arrangements are called CAPTCHAs, and they were effective because only humans have the ability to copy them. Right. Exactly. So, spammers are beginning to hire humans to do their typing for them, and it doesn't matter what language these humans speak--if they can copy and type quickly, that's all that matters. Of course, these jobs pay very low wages in places like Russia and Southeast Asia, and by "low wage," I mean $2 or $3 a day. And yes, copying these CAPTCHAs is enough of a bother that spammers will only go after the really really big fish. Bothering bloggers isn't worth the time and money, but in a time of increased concern over identity theft, it really is a scary development.

(NPR story)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Does that tree look like a mushroom to you?
Has anyone else read Riddley Walker, by Russell Hoban? It is unique, and Hoban did manage to put the reader in a very different and sad place. It's haunting, yet--I did not enjoy reading it. The language is intentionally different and garbled, since this story takes place a couple thousand years after a nuclear holocaust. And the message, in part, seems to be that we humans just can't be trusted; the climax of this book is the reinvention of gunpowder. Oh, and it takes place in Canterbury, which I thought was clever. Hoban's story was inspired by a painting of the legend of Saint Eustace at Canterbury Cathedral and is easier to read than The Canterbury Tales. That is very reassuring, I know. Heh.

Anyway, this is our scary bookgroup selection, and it is MY FAULT. I can explain. I knew that this other member really really loved this book and really really wanted us to discuss it some time, and I wasn't expecting people to look my way for this decision, so I blindly said, 'let's go with the one CC's been wanting to read.' I knew not what I was doing, and perhaps I will be banned from ever picking another one. That would be okay.

That said, Riddley Walker won lots of awards and is highly thought of, and it is a talented work, but it's not all that much fun to read. So. If you've read Riddley Walker, give me the business:

Firewall

2010-10-15T00:00:00.000-07:00

At first, I thought this was a bad firewall, but then it struck me that perhaps it's more like an orange praying mantis coming through a fissure in a wall. Who am I to tell?

And Boo! It's the Ides of October, already. I like October, and it's running away.

Et tu, Bon Peep? (Et you is right.)

Mirror, Mirror

2010-10-06T03:42:00.000-07:00

While reading the Harry Potter books, I was fascinated by the idea of an enchanted mirror* that would allow the bearer to see his heart's desire reflected back at him.

Would the reflection always be the same, or would it change every day? Would I be surprised? Perhaps, like Ron Weasley, I'd simply be more popular. I've always had this fear that I am overly annoying, a bit odd, and say all the wrong things. Or simply seem stupid. But then again, that is IF people really give me a second thought while they're brooding over all their own conversations.

Those little pills I take do make it easier to sail through the day without feeling too much angst about all the little signals I'm misinterpreting, anyhow. It allows me to get on with it while others misinterpret my behavior.

*mirror of erised

Take Heart

2010-10-05T11:20:00.001-07:00

This is just rushing the season! People already have trouble enjoying fall because of the dread of winter being around the corner, without posting something like this. Wait--is that a butterfly caught in the center? Ah, this is one of those whorley-gig things that was put up to look pretty and decorative in the summer and was never taken down. A vestige.

It's also a very pretty picture, really, of a snow that's just fallen. It won't stay so clean and pretty, so by all means, take the picture. It'll last forever.

I didn't do much with my weekend, I must admit, but I did throw out a few things, especially old calendars that were there to remind me of how much I used to run (tempo runs, quarter mile repeats, long runs...did I really, honestly do all that, follow a--routine?) and accuse me of doing exactly what I am doing now. And I moved around some knick-knacks (it's more fun to say that if you pronounce both k's) to make more room for books, and they are a very literal vestige of where I've been and what my tastes have been. Now they are in the basement. Yep, there's a flamingo shelf down there to cheer me on when I'm using the treadmill. All those flos in my fan crowd.

Obviously, they can't hand anyone a cup of water or any jellybeans, but I was never good at consuming stuff while running, anyway. But they are festive.

Flamingos: there's something retro about them, but they remain popular.

I suppose I was going somewhere with that, but--

pieces

2010-10-04T11:31:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, making collages was probably my favorite crafty-artsy activity, because I wasn't crafty or artsy. My collages tended to look pretty much like everyone else's, that is, as good as everyone else's, so there was no stress involved, just fun. Of course, I never moved beyond classifying things. That is, all my collages had a very simple theme. I never chose my collage's elements because of aesthetic reasons because--I'm not artsy. My collages were merely collections of images that I had categorized in some kind of cognitive way that had nothing to do with how they were going to look together.

The above collage goes a bit beyond that. Yes, it's all about words, but not just any words. It's distinctively feminine. It has pieces of composition and textbooks, pieces of stationery, and even the moon. La Luna. It evokes thoughts of reading love letters at night, or simply dreaming of them. There are memories of someone's schoolgirl days involved in this collage.

Funny, I haven't thought about collage in such a long time, but when they are thoughtfully done, they are something to contemplate.

Happy Monday.

the growler

January postmortem, and Rabbit, rabbit!

Sugar on top

Death Comes to Pemberley

Another book review

High on January

Behind the Beautiful Forevers, by Katherine Boo

Say yes to Friday!

Two Days

Rabbit, rabbit!

The Last Nude, by Ellis Avery

Joy! It's the weekend...

Significant Saturday

Woohoo! 49 and holding...

Status report

Rabbit, rabbit! Good Luck in November!

Just Another Day

Wake up, shake it off, go on

Rabbit, rabbit!!

Build a bridge and get over it.

Galoshes

Happy Fall!

Scrabbled Brains

Something to be happy about

Rabbit, rabbit!!

Appealing

What's the Buzz?

Same Old

Snow (Hey Oh)-The Vitamin String Quartet

Random Pictures from a Birthday

Rabbit, rabbit, good luck in August!!

Appointment in Samarra, by John O'Hara

Rabbit, rabbit!!

My Latest Freebie

Beautiful Sunday

~~~Intermission~~~~

Fictional June

Fifth Business

Alright

Peas and Carrots

XXX

It's all about Monday

Rabbit, rabbit!!

Do you believe in...

Science fiction:Soft Apocalypse by Will McIntosh

Decompressing

Silence

Rabbit, rabbit!

Can't find the nap

Winding Down

Mort, by Terry Prachett

Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel

Here comes the sun...

Safe for now...

Rampage

Rabbit, rabbit!

Last Wednesday of March

Wednesday

Funeral for a Dog, by Thomas Pletzinger

Weekend Update

Weekend Update

Rabbit, rabbit!

Last Day!

Too funny. Really!

So many holidays!

Catch My Eye

Anniversary Weekend

Beautiful Sunday

Ice, Ice Baby

Rabbit, rabbit!

Getting on with it

The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy

Surprise!

Sweet Sorrow

peas and carrots

Rabbit, rabbit, Happy New Year!

Pretty Cocky

Home again

Soon. Very Soon.

You Know When the Men Are Gone

~Intermission~~