An Archivist's Miscellania

Tennis weekend coming up

2012-01-27T13:59:00.001-06:00

In the ongoing attempt to keep life as normal as possible during pregnancy, I have entered a tennis tournament this weekend. You didn't think I would let a little thing like that get in the way of tennis taking over my life, did you? We have been playing in an informal mixed-doubles league since November, and still have our weekly class, and now, a tournament. I haven't really played singles since October, and since the actual league season starts next month, I figured I needed some practice. (Yes, I know most of you don't know and don't care about the difference in the informal and actual league play - just read one as "for fun" and one as "serious, if we win we could be really cool" or something like that.) So, I will be playing three matches over the weekend in a round robin sort of thing. It is indoors, which is sort of a bummer, because playing outside is better, but since it is only supposed to get to 50 tomorrow, I guess inside will have to do. Actually, we did have our lessons outside both of the first two Saturdays of the year, but it was a bit warmer those days.

Anyway, I have no idea how I will do - like I said, I haven't played singles lately, and while doubles is still tennis, it is really different in the way you play shots and how much you run around. If I win it all (bwa ha ha) I will surely let you know.

A little news

2012-01-23T16:07:00.000-06:00

In case you don't follow me or my mother on Facebook, let me share a little news: I am pregnant, due in August. Benjamin and I are pleased, although not jumping-up-and-down-with-glee excited (I don't do that kind of excited - it just gives me a stomach ache, and Benjamin is generally too much of a philosopher to get giddy about anything). While I may occasionally mention something about said pregnancy here or post pictures of the (eventual) child, I do not have any intention to make this a pregnancy blog, or a baby blog, because really, no-one apart from my mother would care. As it is, even though I am on FB regularly and tell you about my adventures (or whine about lack thereof) I don't share all that many of my private thoughts and emotions online, and I don't really see that changing. So, you don't have to start avoiding my blog for fear of seeing ultrasound pictures or pregnant belly pictures. Promise. Once the baby actually arrives, all bets are off, but until then...

Snoqualmie Falls

2012-01-18T14:11:00.000-06:00

Eesh. I didn't realize it had been a week since I last posted. Not intended at all! Anyway, onward to this post.

One of the things we did while in Bellevue for Christmas was take a trip up to Snoqualmie Falls and the Salish Lodge. The primary objective was breakfast, and that was good - I had a salmon hash - but a very important second was the falls themselves.

No picture can really show how impressive the Falls are. They are taller than Niagara (if nowhere near as wide)! There is a power plant attached to the Falls, and as an elementary school student, I went on a field trip there, not that I remember much about it other than it was impressive.

They are great place to take out of town visitors (and the restaurant is pretty good too). The hiking trail that leads to the bottom of the falls is currently closed (until 2013, according to the website I linked above) while they are going construction, but you can still get some great views from the viewing platform or from the sight-seeing train, which doesn't run during the winter.

Pretty, sparkly lights!

2012-01-10T10:52:00.000-06:00

As promised last week, here are some sparkly lights to brighten up what is a gray and gloomy January day (well, it is gloomy and rainy and cold here in Little Rock anyway). This display is put on every year at the Bellevue Botanical Gardens, and never really gets old.

I think we went the first year it opened, when it was just a few flowers in the darkness and a small cart selling powdered hot chocolate. Now, it is over half a million lights over several acres, with a full espresso stand. As Benjamin said, you know when you are in Seattle when there is an espresso stand at the light display.

The pictures don't really do the lights justice, although I was pretty pleased with how well the night light setting on my camera worked this time. The flash only went off a couple of times when the lights were bright enough to make it think it should be lighter than it was. Otherwise, it was mostly just a matter of keeping my hands steady while I shot the picture.

Sprinkled among the flowers were critters and creatures of all kinds, like this spider and the frog in the top picture. Did you spot that one? For the kids, the garden had a sort of scavenger hunt map that listed all of the 30+ animals, and even without the map, I had a great time trying to spot them.

One of the coolest things about the display is that it is not Christmas specific - there was only one Christmas tree in the whole display. That means that it is not at all exclusionary. Bellevue is very multi-ethnic these days, and when we went on Christmas night, there were people from many different cultures and countries visiting, some of who do not celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah. What a great way to lighten the darkest part of the year!

A few Christmas pictures

2012-01-06T12:53:00.004-06:00

This year was our turn to travel during the holidays, so that meant a trek up to Bellevue and my parents. I love being home for Christmas, but I hate the actual travel. Bah humbug! Anyway, here are a few pictures from Christmas morning (I did not include the people, since I love my mother and do not want her to disown me).

We kept the fire in the fireplace going for most of the day, since Christmas in Bellevue was, as it usually is, incredibly cold and damp. The figures on the tables are the wonderful manger scene/creche that my mother and I collected throughout my childhood. I know you can't really see them, but they are in a medieval Italian style. There is an elephant too, which we decided is totally appropriate for the wise men.

My mother's tree was lovely, as usual, but rather restrained compared to past years. The first year we were in the house, my parents went out to the mountains to chop down a tree and came back with one that was as tall as the (two-story) house. Another year, the tree came out half way into the living room.

And this is Winston. He really had nothing to do with Christmas, but he is a fat cat, and therefore belongs on the internet. He has actually lost a few pounds since I saw him last.

Next time - fancy Christmas lights.

Book Review: The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson

2012-01-05T11:40:00.002-06:00

The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I loved this.

Annie and Buster, or Child A and Child B, as they were referred to in their parents' performance art projects, grew up and moved away from home. They were tired of being a part of the performances that caused chaos and disruption as a form of art. But then, after their lives fall apart, thanks to some very bad decisions involving topless photos, a magazine reporter, beer and a potato gun, they both move back home, hoping to find at last a normal sense of family, but fearing the worst. When the worst does happen, Annie and Buster struggle to discover what is real and what is art, how they should react, and what it will take to find a normal life when they finally figure it all out.

Annie and Buster are engaging, messed-up characters who know exactly why they are messed up and are doing the best they can with what they have. I wanted them to find their way to happiness, even as I wanted to see how low they could go. Wilson writes with sly humor and a sensitivity toward his characters, as he takes a set of familiar themes - growing up, leaving home, figuring out where you fit with your parents - and blows them out of all proportion, then brings them back to earth.

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Back from vacation, now with pictures!

2012-01-03T11:41:00.001-06:00

Yes, my dears, I am back from vacation, renewed, refreshed and with plenty of pictures off my camera.

We had the first snow of the season back on December 7th. This is fairly unusual. While it looks like quite a bit, here in the backyard, there was no snow on the roads. Let me repeat that: there was no snow on the roads. I went to the gym at 5:30 AM and had no problems whatsoever getting down our hill or back up. I doubt the people in Brockport would have even noticed that it had snowed. Here, however? It took me 2 hours to get to work. A normal day is 30-40 minutes. Unbelievable.

This is an heirloom tomato from our garden, which I pulled off the bushes while it was still green, in advance of the snow and freeze. Benjamin took this picture on December 21st. Yes, 4 days before Christmas we were eating a fresh tomato from our garden. Almost unbelievable, in an entirely different way.

Stay tuned - later this week I will have pictures from Christmas and from our New Year's Day hike.

Twas the Monday before Christmas

2011-12-19T14:23:00.000-06:00

That blog title doesn't really have anything to do with the post, but it was better than leaving it blank. I know I have been a rather uneven blogger of late, and this isn't really an apology about it, because really, do I need to do that? But I am kind of sad about my lack of posting, especially after looking over some of my past posts. I mean, I used to have lots of photographs, recipes, fun things I did. These days, we are still playing tennis every weekend (but it isn't really interesting enough to blog about or take photos of), I run errands and clean the house, and that is about it. Arkansas is in the middle of the brown time of year, when the leaves are off the trees, the grass is brown, and so are most of the shrubs. I see the occasional lovely sunrise or cloud formation, but usually only when I am driving, so no pictures. I haven't been baking much lately - I guess I sort of burned out on baking bread every week, and can't quite muster the enthusiasm for much else. We can only eat so many cookies, and I only want to clean the kitchen so many times in one weekend.

I don't really want to end the blog, but it is going to take a bigger effort than I have been making lately to keep it going. For now, expect light posting. Maybe I will be ready to be creative and interesting once we get past the holidays.

2011 Reading Challenges Update

2011-12-13T11:58:00.002-06:00

At the beginning of the year, I signed up for two reading challenges - one on Goodreads and one at the Roof Beam Reader. To date, I am done with one, and almost done with the other.

The Goodreads challenge was strictly a challenge of number of books. My initial goal was 110, but I blew past that in August or September, so I updated it to 140. As of today, I have completed that challenge. The 140th book? A Princess of Landover by Terry Brooks. Nearly a quarter of the 140 were graphic novels, a category I really dug into this year. My favorite book of the year? Hmm... I don't know. There were a lot of good ones, quite a few I barely remember, and some I really disliked. Good ones: The Night Circus, When She Woke, Little Brother, Full Catastrophe Living, The City and the City. Cherie Priest became my favorite writer during the year. I cleared quite a few books from my To Read shelves - both the virtual Goodreads one, and the physical one in my living room. But of course, I added far more than I read. Sigh.

The second challenge, the TBR challenge at Roof Beam Reader, is 11/12ths of the way done. That challenge, you may recall, was to pick 12 books from my to be read list, and read them all within the year. A Princess of Landover was my 11th book in the challenge; only Madam Bovary remains, and I am in the middle of listening to it. I restricted myself to books I actually owned, in an attempt to clear off the aforementioned living room shelf, and get myself to read books I had been, for one reason or another, avoiding.

So, am I going to stop reading for the rest of 2011, once I finish Madam Bovary? What do you think? Of course not! If for no other reason, I have a trip to Seattle and back, and flying without a book is just impossible. I don't know if I will sign up for any challenges next year though. I set the bar so high this year, at 140, that I am not sure I would be able to match it. And although it was fun to have a goal to read certain books throughout the year, I don't really need it to keep me reading and clearing off my shelf. If I do decide on either challenge though, you can be sure I will blog about it.

Stuff I Like: Web comics

2011-12-09T14:22:00.001-06:00

Yup, web comics. Growing up, I read the comics (or the funnies, as my dad always calls them) every day, from two separate papers, and comic books. My dad collected comic books for a long time, and got them in trade for doing computer work at a comic book store. Some times I got to pick out my own. I will admit that they were not usually of high quality - Muppet Babies, Popples, probably something Disney - but they were fun. My dad also had books that were collections of comics and even some Disney movies (as a matter of fact, I remember reading the comic of Cinderella with my dad far more fondly than I do the movie itself - no singing, more funny mice!). As an adult, I have had no problem with the idea of graphic novels, and a good number of the 140+ books I will have read this year have been graphic novels, or collections of comics (there is actually a difference, but for my purposes today, all that matters is that both comics and graphic novels use pictures to help tell the stories).

So it really should be no surprise that I read a lot of web comics. Of the set of bookmarks that I go through on a regular basis (I use Google bookmarks to keep them all sorted and in categories and Google reader for the ones I read through RSS), and at least 45 of those are web comics. Yes, 45. Not all of them update every day, but still, that strikes me as a large number. Anyway, the artwork, tone, humor, and subjects are all over the map. Some lean towards the science fiction side of the genre spectrum, while others are steampunk, or steampunk fantasy, or biographical. A few are pretty close to syndicated newspaper cartoons (there are a couple of those too - I just don't read them in the paper any more).

The neat thing about the web is that it is really easy to find new stuff to read, and to sit down and read the entire archives - some going back 10 years. Also, the art can be anything the author/artist wants. Black and white? OK. Color? Cool. Computer rendered (or some other form of animation - I have no idea how they do it, really). Nifty. Like stories about (snarky) talking animals? That's easy to do. 20 somethings trying to figure out life in NYC or Amherst? A kid billionaire, his grandfather and a talking duck? Gotcha covered. Librarians and computer programmers? Totally there for you. Mash-up of funny dialogue and old-time woodcut pictures? Yup.

So, go out and find a web comic. If you want suggestions, I can give you more. Those links are only 20 of the 45, so I am sure I can find something you like!

A silly puppy for a rainy day

2011-12-05T16:02:00.001-06:00

It has been a rainy couple of days here in central Arkansas. After months of below average rain, the skies have opened up, and we are now way above average - currently the 4th rainiest year on record (which isn't as impressive as it sounds, since apparently, that stat only goes back to the 1970s). Put another way, we have had over 30% of the rain for the year since November 1st. Ugh. When people complain that it rains a lot in Seattle, I like to point out that, on average, Little Rock (and Austin) gets more rain (50.9 inches) than Seattle (37.2). The difference is that Seattle is cloudy a heck of a lot more - almost 300 days a year that are either partly cloudy (82), or cloudy(226), compared to Little Rock's 247(100/147). Info from Climate Zone.

Anyway, it was rainy this weekend, and today. Although this picture is from the night of our hike, when both Miikka and I were pooped, we did spend some time like this yesterday. Well, not quite like this. I was upright, and he was on my lap, instead of draped like some boneless slouch.

2011-12-02T11:49:00.001-06:00

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In an experiment, journalist and author Barbara Ehrenreich tried to see if she could survive by working at low-wage jobs. She had to find an entry-level job, housing, and food in each of the three cities she lived in, and manage to eat and stay safe, for a month. Could she do it? Answer: not very well. In each case, the rents were too high, the pay too low, the conditions appalling (at least for someone coming from a comfortable middle-class background).

Her attempts took place around 1999-2000, when the economy was doing much better than it is now, when there was very low unemployment and many open jobs were waiting for workers. I remember her saying in an interview in the last year or so (for the 10th anniversary) that there is no way she could do this now - there just aren't any jobs out there. Which just makes the situation worse, and makes some of her conclusions seem like tragic predictions.

A very quick read, and eye-opening, even to someone who has read about/ worked with/ known about poverty and the perils of being part of the working-poor. It also makes me even angrier now when I hear Republicans talking about how we have to preserve the incomes of the very wealthy and put more of the burden on the poor.

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More from Spy Rock

2011-11-30T15:57:00.001-06:00

Most of the trees on the hike were bare (apart from the pines, of course), but there were still many interesting things to see. Like this cairn that some past hiker constructed out of the local rock.

And these fungi that covered a dead tree on the side of the trail.

From a quick internet search for "tree fungi" I found an index to tree fungi, which gave me a name -turkey tail fungus - and led me to this interesting website. I absolutely love the internet and the speedy finding of information! Sure, I could have found this information in a book, eventually, assuming that my library had a book of fungi.

There was also this lovely spiral of lichen on a rock.

And moss that seemed to glow when the light hit it just right.

These pictures don't really do the glow justice, but hopefully you can get the idea. It is the small views like these that motivate me to get out into the woods, just as much as the vista from the top of the mountain.

Post-Thanksgiving Hike: Spy Rock, 8.8 Miles

2011-11-28T13:35:00.001-06:00

Wearing orange so hunters don't shoot us.

On Friday, we took our now annual post-Thanksgiving hike. We started doing this as a tradition back in Texas, as a way to avoid shopping or sitting at home doing homework. This year, we chose an 8.8 mile loop hike in the Ozark National Forest that took us through a (planted) pine grove, up the side of a ridge, and eventually to the top of the tallest hill/mountain in the area.

Because most of the leaves were off the oaks, we had some great views out over the surrounding countryside as we climbed. Although it was primarily an uphill sort of hike on the way out, it wasn't really that bad, and I speak as someone who really hates hiking uphill.

There were some great natural features, like this big boulder and moss and lichen (which I am saving for another day).

And peeking through the trees is a view of Spy Rock - the midpoint/destination of the hike.

Hmm. I was calling this Spy Mountain when I was telling people about it, but clearly, I was incorrect. The sign from the trail proves it.

This was the view at the top. What you can't feel is the wind. Hold on to your hats!

It was a good day for a hike - not too cold, but not too hot. And it was only really windy at the exposed top of Spy Rock.

Miikka had a grand time on the hike. Yes, he made it all 8.8 miles without any trouble. And even better, he was allowed to go almost the entire way off-leash. The dog who, in the neighborhood, can't even be let out in the front yard off-leash, went at least 8 miles without wandering away or running off into the woods. He just stayed on the trail, between Benjamin and I, the whole way. Once, at a Y in the trail, he did want to go down the opposite fork, but was eventually convinced to come with us instead. And even then, he didn't just cut through the grass to reach us - he trotted back to the Y, staying on the trail. He was on the leash at the top of the mountain, while we ate lunch, because I don't particularly trust him not to go over the edge, and a couple of times when we got close to logging roads where we heard the occasional 4-wheeler (the only other people we saw the entire hike). Otherwise, totally free. What a good hiker!

When She Woke book review

2011-11-22T14:43:00.001-06:00

When She Woke by Hillary Jordan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wow. A re-telling/re-working of The Scarlet Letter. When She Woke is set in a not-too-distant distopian future United States, where the religious right/social conservatives have taken over the government and laws, where there is a Secretary of Faith in the president's cabinet and where having an abortion nets you the same punishment as a murderer. And that punishment - the guilty person is Chromed through genetic implants, turned a specific color indicative of the crime. As someone who grew up close to, though not really a part of, the world of conservative evangelicals, and as someone who is furious at the current crop of politicians trying to roll back human rights in American, this book was both terrifying, and heartening.

Hannah has been Chromed for aborting the product of her affair with a very married, very important man. Once released back into the world that now despises her and, in some cases, actively wants her dead, she must learn who she really is, what she really believes, and how to survive. She was always a little too rebellious for her very straight-laced mother, asking too many questions, not following the full intent of the law, but this characteristic becomes what saves her, in the end. It carries her from the halfway house of horror to a chance at a new life and a true re-awakening.

I almost gave this 5 stars, but there were a few too many moments where I wanted to shake some sense into Hannah for that rating. Overall though, a fantastic book, and one that would be a great pick for a book club or reading group.

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Funny things I saw this week

2011-11-18T15:03:00.001-06:00

Woo! Friday! Here are a couple of funny things I saw this week:
Two Lumps - a cat cartoon that is snarky and funny. I just discovered this one, and am working my way through the archives.

Jimmy Fallon as Jim Morrison, singing the Reading Rainbow theme song. Sorry, it isn't available to be embedded - you will just have to go click.

And one more, to make it a few funny things instead of a couple: Eating Over the Sink, a humorous parenting blog by Samantha Bee (from the Daily Show) and her friend, Allana Harkin. I don't have kids, obviously, and many things I read about having children/pregnancy/parenting scare the crap out of me, quite frankly. Not this one. I think it is the humor that makes everything seem like the whole might be a little more manageable, when I get around to it (if I do).

When I said I wanted rain...

2011-11-16T15:28:00.001-06:00

I didn't mean this much, all at once. This is a photo from the National Weather Service, showing how much rain we got on Tuesday. Our house is smack in the middle of the 4-5+ inches of rain. It was a record-breaking day, apparently. One that our roof wasn't quite prepared for - we have a leak in the kitchen, right over the kitchen table. A leaky roof is not one of the joys of home-ownership. We are hoping that we just need to have it patched, and not completely replaced, since the problem seems to be in just one spot.

Sorry to say, I am really not mentally equipped to deal with such problems. Usually, I am a forward thinking feminist, capable of dealing with anything that comes my way, but when something goes wrong with my house or car, I revert. I want my husband to step into the stereotypical gender role and fix it for me. If I had a time machine, I would to go back in time to high school and take shop class and auto mechanics, so that my ignorance of those subjects, which is what makes me freak out, goes away. Yeah, yeah, I could probably take such a class now, but it would have been better back then, before the freaking out. Sigh.

What I will do for books

2011-11-15T11:18:00.001-06:00

If you have been reading me for any length of time, you know I am a book nerd, or book geek, or whatever you preferred designation. At the start of the year, I set a goal of reading 110 books this year; I blew past that in September or October. My to-read shelf at Goodreads has almost 600 books on it (I keep reading books on it, but then I find a like a particular author, and have to add everything else they wrote, or the author mentions an author that was influential for them, and I have to go and add that author...). I read author blogs, follow authors on Twitter, read Publisher's Weekly and Library Journal (those two are ostensibly for work purposes, but really, they just feed my habit). All of this is to say, yes, I am a wee bit obsessed with books.

So it should come as no surprise that I drove 3 hours each direction to Memphis this past Saturday, just to hear Cherie Priest talk for an hour at a book store to promote her most recent book, Ganymede. She is definitely one of my favorite authors right now, and while I read her blog and twitter feeds (and feel a little like a stalker whenever I reply to something), I had never seen her in person.* My dad saw her at a book event in Seattle and told me that she reminded him of me (by which I think basically, he meant that she is a smart, snarky female, but hey, whatever). Since book tours are pretty rare these days for any author who is not also a great personage, I jumped at the chance to see her, even though it did mean 6 hours in the car.

Not that driving 6 hours just for book-related activities is unheard of in my family. One summer, when Benjamin and I were living with my parents, Mom, Dad and I (Benjamin refused to be crammed in a car for 6 hours with all three of us, just for a bookstore run - probably wise), drove the three hours from Seattle to Portland, just to go to Powells Bookstore. That's it. We did nothing else except each lunch while were there. If you know Powells though, you know that it was totally worth it.

Anyway, the talk was fun - I got a couple of books signed (she probably would have signed everything I have, if I had lugged it in, but two is fine), and got to say hello. I confessed to being an, um, ardent, fan, and she even recognized my name from comments on FB and Twitter. (I have been assured by another author that I have interacted with in Twitter that simply chatting is not at all like stalking, but I can't quite shake the feeling that I am probably annoying them somehow.) Actually, I was having a hard time not acting like a manic fan girl before the reading, when she came into the cafe where we were eating lunch. I am usually so not a fan girl type - too beneath whatever dignity I pretend to posses, but I was almost bouncing up and down and giggling. Benjamin was, I think, mildly amused at my silliness.

If you ever get the chance to see a favorite author, you should. Go, listen, chat if they offer that opportunity, and buy a book - even if you already have all of them. They need our support in this world that is increasingly hostile to endeavors that don't make tons of money. And you might just have a good time!

*I take that back. I did see her a couple of years ago at ALA when she was on a Scifi/fantasy panel, and I got a free copy of Boneshaker. I had tried to read it a few months before and couldn't get into it, but after hearing her talk about it, and having a free copy, I tried again and really liked it. (Benjamin makes fun of me for disliking it, and then doing a 180). Enough that I then read everything else. But still, that was a panel, and I didn't know anything about her then.

Should I run a 10k?

2011-11-09T15:09:00.000-06:00

I'm thinking about it, just a bit. My exercise routine needs a little shaking up, maybe a real goal to work for - pounding the treadmill just because is getting old. I'd love to be able to run outside, which might be enough of a change, but since I have to go to the gym at 5 AM (OK, 5:30) it is far too dark for me to feel comfortable outside by myself. The other times I have available for running that aren't too dark are usually dedicated to walking the dog. I feel guilty leaving him at home when I go outside for exercise, since he really needs walks, and I like walking as a form of relaxation.

Anyway, a goal. I don't really feel any desire to become a long distance runner, and I don't really care about races - I run to get aerobic exercise, mostly, and to increase my endurance for tennis and fencing. But now that I can routinely run 3 miles at a time on the treadmill, I am bored. It seems like a 10K would be a good goal to work towards. But maybe I should be working on other things first, like increasing my speed at the 5K (even though I just said I don't care about races, that doesn't mean I don't want to go faster). I'm just not sure - you could pour syrup on me and call me a waffle I change my mind so often.

Part of the problem, I think, is that I spend too much time reading blogs and magazine posts by serious runners - people for whom running is their primary form of entertainment and hobby, who race for fun, who worry about their split times and minute changes to their strides, and how to fuel up for an ultra-marathon - and I start to think that way too, or at least think that I should think that way. This isn't necessarily bad, but a lot of what I read is certainly over my head, and written for people with a different focus. And after a while, I start thinking that there is only one way to do things - the competitive way - and lose sight of my actual goals with running. (This is a not uncommon problem with me.) And those goals are really not related to running - running is more of a tool for me to improve my other hobbies, instead of the hobby itself. I do want to improve, and I want to make sure I am doing things correctly so I don't injure myself, but I am, ultimately, not trying to be a serious runner.

So, I am thinking about a 10K, but I haven't decided. And if I don't do it, that's OK. I need to remember that back in January, when I first starting thinking about running, I couldn't run 3 miles, I hated running, and I wouldn't have even thought about a 10K.

It's the little things

2011-11-07T08:40:00.002-06:00

Some days, Monday's especially, it can be the little things that keep you going. Today, it is my new tights. I am absolutely thrilled - thrilled I tell you - that I found several pairs of tights at the store that are NOT control-top, and do not make me feel like sausage. I want tights that keep my legs warm and complement my clothes, not ones that make me feel like I am being cut in half. So, yay for the new tights I bought this weekend.

A song for Thursday

2011-11-03T14:44:00.000-05:00

Not much to say this week, apparently. So you get a video of one of my favorite musicians -Karine Polwart - playing one of my favorite songs. Warning - it is folky, so if you have an aversion to that sort of thing, don't click. And don't tell me if you don't like it - I don't want to hear it.

Bye Bye Worms

2011-11-01T13:24:00.002-05:00

If you have been following me for a long time, you might remember that we have a worm bin. Or rather, that we had a worm bin. We started using a worm bin to dispose of food scraps back in Austin, when we lived in an apartment and didn't want all the banana peels, apple cores, coffee grounds etc that we produced to go to waste. The worm castings and worm "tea" were great fertilizers for our container gardens. Although it was never as odorless or bugless as the various books and websites asserted it could be, we put up with fruit flies in the bathroom and extra cockroaches on the porch for almost 9 years. They moved to Bellevue with us for a summer, and back to Austin. When we moved to New York, we gave the bin and its batch of worms to a friend. but shortly after we arrived in Brockport, I made a new bin and restocked it. That batch moved to Arkansas with us and lived in our bathroom whenever it was too hot or too cold.

Lately, however, we have been neglecting the worms. Partially, we had a hard time generating enough food for them, since we now also have two regular compost bins in the back yard. We eat a lot of vegetables and fruit, but not so much that the remains can sustain worms and compost. On Saturday, as we were leaving for tennis, I noticed that there were suddenly a lot of dead worms on the floor of the garage - probably because there wasn't anything left to eat in the bin, and they made an ill-fated break for freedom. The garage was never a great place to keep them anyway, since it gets pretty hot in the summer, and there are lots of roaches. So, rather than let the rest of the worms suffer, I emptied the remaining worms into one of the compost bins. If they like it there, they can help the microbes eat up the leaves and food waste and Kirby-bedding. And we will no longer have to have two yogurt containers on the counter with mouldering food in them - just the bucket under the sink.

I feel a little sad about quitting our vermicomposting adventure, although it stopped being much of an adventure quite a while ago. It was certainly something different, something not at all corporate or widespread. Something that was a sort of an extreme lifestyle choice, like making my own yogurt and baking my own bread every week (I don't do either of those all that often anymore), but not as far out as living in a yurt or becoming a dumpster diving freegan. Now, I am just a normal suburban environmentalist, with compost bins and a clothesline.

Wait, what?

2011-10-28T15:05:00.001-05:00

It has come to my attention that it is Friday, and I have written nothing since Monday. Huh. Not sure how that happened. If I recall correctly, this week has taken about a month to pass by, so it is a little surprising that it is over so quickly. Anyway, my dad sent me this picture the other day. Guess who?

Weekend Update

2011-10-24T14:24:00.000-05:00

One of these days, when Benjamin goes out of town, I am going to spend the entire time sitting on the couch reading a book or watching TV. Not this past weekend. Nope, nope, I was too darn busy. On Saturday, I played tennis (twice), had a hair cut, did the weekly grocery shopping, walked the dog, did dishes. Sunday, I did three loads of laundry, went to church, cleaned the bathrooms, vacuumed, baked bread, made soup, made yogurt, walked the dog, washed dishes (at least twice, thanks to all the baking), and eventually picked Benjamin up from the airport. And in doing all these things drove at least 200 miles - half the things I did were in Conway, which is 15 miles to the north, and the tennis was 20 miles to the south.

Oh, and I baked these cookies. So good. Go make them. Now. Here is the recipe from Simply Recipes (if you follow the link, you can get a handy printable version, which is very handy).

Chocolate Orange Shortbread Cookies Recipe

Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 40 minutes

I like Hershey's Special Dark for this recipe as it gives baked goods a dark, nearly black color and a rich cocoa flavor. However, Ghiradelli unsweetened cocoa or any other brand will do just fine and give more prominence to the orange flavor.

Ingredients

1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt (*Hope's note - yes, Kosher salt for baking. It give the cookies a great bit of saltiness that keeps them from being too rich or sweet.)
12 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup + 2 Tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 Tablespoon of orange zest

Method

1 Preheat oven to 325°F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
2 Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, and salt in a bowl. (Do not skip this step as cocoa powder has a tendency to clump. You want the dry ingredients sifted to ensure a tender cookie.) Set aside.
3 Beat the butter and sugar together on medium speed in a mixer for 5 minutes, being sure to scrape down the sides and bottom as needed. Add the vanilla and orange zest and mix for 30 seconds. Add about half the flour mixture and mix on low speed. Scrape down the bottom and sides and add the rest of the flour mixture. Once incorporated mix at medium speed for 2 minutes.
4 Lay out a sheet of parchment paper and place the dough on it. Cover with another sheet of parchment paper and roll out to 1/4-inch thickness with a rolling pin. (You can also lightly flour a work space, but I find my method far easier, cleaner, and the shortbread keeps a sandy texture by not picking up the extra flour.) You may find the dough getting too soft. If it does, place it in the freezer for ten minutes to firm it up before you continue rolling or cutting. (The dough is very hard to work with when soft.) Cut into desired shapes and place on the baking sheets about 1-inch apart.
5 Bake for 13-15 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through baking. It can be difficult to tell when these cookies are done, so when they smell like freshly baked cookies and the edges are slightly firm but still give a bit then consider them done (simply enough, it takes some judgment on your part). Remove the pans and allow the cookies to cool for a minute or two before moving to a wire rack to cool completely.
Yield: Makes 2 1/2 dozen.

Book Review: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

2011-10-19T12:49:00.000-05:00

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Based on my short perusal of the other reviews on Goodreads, this is one book that you will either really like or really dislike - not too many in-the-middles. I would give it 4.5 stars, if able. I doubt I will stop thinking about it for a while, and I want to read it again, soon, to catch things I missed, to revel in the story without the mystery.

It is not an action-filled magical romp; there is no heart-pounding suspense. It is a story that takes time to unfold, and for much of the book you will be slightly confused about what just happened, or why it was important. The dates at the beginning of each chapter are very important to following the flow.

I do think that some of the dislike from other readers comes from disappointment that they got a different book that they expected from the descriptions. Some of the marketing around the book makes this sound like it will be a circus-centered Harry Potter or a Victorian Lev Grossman-style post-modern take on the magical adventure, with some Romeo and Juliet action as well. It is not. The magical contest that sets events in motion is never clearly defined, for the reader or the two main participants. It is not explosions and obvious displays of power. That vagueness continues through much of the book, clouded in a dream-like state and mystery. If you are expecting magical duels of the Harry Potter sort, you will need to look elsewhere. It is not that sort of book.

However, if you are interested in dreams, and the power of stories, and the way both unfold and change with the telling, you may like this. It is also about obsession and love, and friendship, and, of course, the circus.

Not for everyone, I do realize, and I don't know if I would actively push it on any of my friends - in part because I wouldn't want to tarnish it for myself if they didn't like it - but I do recommend you at least give it a try.

All in all, I am very happy that I won a copy of this in a Twitter contest, so I don't have to wait for it at the library, and I have it around to read again, when I get a chance.

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In other news, Fall seem to finally be making an appearance here in Arkansas. On Monday, the temperature hovered near 90; yesterday it never got to 60, and it rained! After my trip to Seattle, where it felt just like Fall should (well, to me anyway), I was rather sad to have to return to the extended summer that had captured Arkansas, so I am pretty darn happy about this turn.

Cranky Monday/Stuff I Like

2011-10-17T16:25:00.002-05:00

Maybe it is because I have been hit with a new wave of homesickness after my weekend trip to Seattle, maybe it is because that trip meant I had to spend three hours sitting in the Chicago airport yesterday, and more hours crammed into flying tin cans, or maybe it is just because it is Monday, whatever it is, I am feeling cranky today. So instead of telling you about my trip (which went really well, apart from crankiness) because I would probably just rant about fellow travelers etc, I will tell you about a few things I really like right now.

Kickstarter: "A new way to fund creative projects," Kickstarter is a website that allows people with creative ideas to find funding to help them realize their projects. You can find all sorts of things on there, from movies to music to public art and a calendar made entirely from keyboard keys (I am thinking about pledging for that one). If the project doesn't get at least 100% of its funding pledged, it doesn't happen. You can't lose your money. Everyone who pledges is rewarded in some way - at the lowest levels, that is often just a thank you card, but at higher levels, you often get a copy of the completed project, signed items, etc. I have pledged for a couple of movies, both documentaries, that I am really excited to see when they are finished.
Twitter - OK, not a new thing, and not terribly original, but I have really gotten into it lately. At first, I didn't see the point, but that was because I wasn't following anyone. Now, I use it to find new articles about topics I am interested in, and to interact with some of my favorite authors. I don't really share many of my own thoughts or whatnot on Twitter, the way I do here or (less and less often) on Facebook, but if I find a good link, I will probably throw it up there. It feels less invasive to share on Twitter than it does on Facebook, in part because I don't have to have all my personal info there to share with a wider group. And if I never tweeted myself, I would still be welcome to see what others post.
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. A really good new fantasy novel. I won a copy in a contest on, where else?, Twitter. A mix of magic, romance, mystery and a circus. Makes me want some cotton candy and cocoa.
Jonboy Caramels: Found these at the Bellevue Farmer's Market last week, while I was home. I bought a box of the Absinthe with Black Salt. Now I must restrain myself from ordering the minimum 5 boxes...and wipe up the drool.

Judgment Day by Penelope Lively

2011-10-12T14:26:00.002-05:00

Judgment Day by Penelope Lively
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I love Penelope Lively's books, and I always find it so hard to describe why. They are generally quiet, without the bluster or bombast of so many novels, yet they are not cloying or claustrophobic. They are observational, but not overly full of description. Generally, I have to like a character in a book to like the book, but I don't feel that need with Lively's books. Certainly, there are characters I empathize with, and others that I dislike immensely, but I don't latch on to any one person.

Judgment Day is very much a Lively novel, in all of those senses. Set in a small English village, it is centered around an ancient church and its neighbors, and the events that happen one spring and summer when they plan a church fundraiser. The fundraiser is to be a play based on several violent moments in the history of the village and church. Throughout the story, there is an undercurrent of tension, or possible violence, like a tiger waiting to spring, and you don't know until the end how or if it will strike. Several of the main characters ponder faith and fate and existence, as many people do, and come away changed, and yet the same, as most people do. Lives are changed forever, and not changed, as is so often the case in real life. A picture of a village, and a picture of the wider world.

Note: This was one of my TBR challenge books for this year.

The Terrible Minutiae of Daily Life

2011-10-11T15:53:00.004-05:00

I wish I had something amazing to share with you here. I don't, since life is pretty much trundling onwards, with only minor diversions and hiccups. One of the problems of keeping a random-focused blog is that there isn't any one topic to fall back on when nothing is going on. I mean, I played four tennis matches in 2 days this weekend, but since I am really just an amateur and the stakes weren't very high, I doubt that qualifies as an exciting adventure. Now, if I were writing a tennis blog, I could feel justified in regaling you with all the details (as much as I remember of them). Instead, I will just say that I won one of my two singles matches, and lost the second, and Benjamin and I didn't win our mixed doubles matches, but we didn't disgrace ourselves either. We got t-shirts.

Apart from that, I am heading home to Bellevue on Thursday for a few days to visit my parents while my dad continues to recuperate from the open heart surgery he had last week. I think my main job is to keep him occupied and save my mother's sanity - not necessarily easy tasks when done at the same time! Anyway, the upshot of that is that Benjamin and I won't be having any interesting hiking adventures this weekend, and I won't be taking my camera to Bellevue, so you won't even have any pictures of my mother's extremely fat cat (he's 30 pounds, but he has an extended colon and possibly glandular issues...). Then Benjamin is going out of town the next weekend for a conference, and I will be left up to my own devices, which means I will probably watch far too many episodes of Leverage and clean the house. Ooh, I can feel your excitement building from here.

Maybe I will think up something clever to say while sitting on the airplane, and if I do, I will try to write it down so I can share it. Otherwise, you may have only books reviews and observations about how mundane my life is for a little while.

Book Review: Ganymede by Cherie Priest

2011-10-07T16:14:00.001-05:00

Ganymede by Cherie Priest
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Cherie Priest is one of my favorite authors right now, and Ganymede is a good example of why. You start with a hefty helping of adventure, some humor, a little social commentary, mix it all up, and you get a novel that compels you to keep reading (even when you should be cleaning house or something else "productive").

This time, the action is mostly centered in New Orleans, where Josephine Early is trying to get a purloined Confederate submarine out of Lake Pontchartrain and out to the Gulf, where it will be given over to the Union. Problem? The sub has killed just about everyone who has tried to sail it, including its inventor. As a last resort, she sends to Seattle for her old friend (and lover) Andan Cly, airship pirate (last seen in Boneshaker, the first Clockwork Century book), on the chance that an airship pilot will have better luck than the sailors who have tried in the past. Cly sets out from Seattle with a new love interest on his mind, and a couple of new crew members. Throw in occupying Texians, zombis, and the tension from a long ago love affair, and you have another great story.

My only quibble is that a few bits of plot don't seem to lead anywhere, exactly, like the Texian who has basically taken up residence at Josephine's "boarding house." He plays a small part in learning about the zombis, or at least I assume he does, since the last we see of him, he is heading off to talk to a Texas Ranger in his hat and underwear, but there were so many hints that he was something more that I felt like he got lost somewhere. There were also hints that Kirby Troost, Cly's newest crewmember, may not be all that he seems - but no revelation. But these are really only minor quibbles in a book that kept me turning pages and holding my breath more than once.

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This is just to make me feel better

2011-10-05T15:46:00.003-05:00

Open letter to the lady who was so rude to me yesterday while I was driving:
I am sorry you were having a bad day. But did you really have to try to ruin mine as well? Honking like that, just because I merged into your lane (in a safe, legal, polite way) is really obnoxious. I didn't cut you off, didn't make you miss the light, didn't make any gestures at you. We were hardly moving as it was, and I used my blinker. Part of the responsibility of driving is being able to subsume your own desire to get somewhere and your own self-centeredness under the greater good of traffic flow and civil society. I know I am not always patient with other drivers myself, but if they use their blinkers and don't do anything that might cause an accident, I try to cut them some slack (Note: Benjamin might disagree). So, for the sake of anyone else who has to be driving around you: Grow Up, learn the rules of the road, and let someone merge once in a while.

Shoulda played hooky

2011-10-04T09:21:00.000-05:00

The weather this month (all four days so far) has been gorgeous - perfect temperatures, light breezes, sunshine. On Saturday, I spent most of the day outside - first through 4 hours of tennis, and then at a picnic/potluck in the afternoon. Sunday, I was inside more, but I still managed to get in some time in the yard. What I haven't managed to do is go for a hike. This is almost the perfect time of year to head out to the woods in Arkansas. The various and many fall hunting seasons have started, but aren't yet in full swing, so there is less danger of being mistaken for a deer as you hike than there is in November; the weather is not too hot or too cold or too wet. The trees are starting to turn, so there are pretty things to look at.

Alas, we probably won't be hitting the woods until the end of the month, thanks to a tennis tournament and various travel commitments. I was so very tempted to kidnap Benjamin and head out to the woods today. Would have been a lot nicer than the test grading he has to do and the sitting at a desk staring at a computer that I have to do. I wish I wasn't so responsible!

Friday, end of 30 days

2011-09-30T15:01:00.003-05:00

Well, I didn't make it every day this month, but 21 of 30 is still pretty good. What did I learn this time around? That it is really hard to come up with something worth saying every single day of the month. Especially when life is playing routine, and there aren't any exciting trips or hikes or events to talk about. I don't really want to bore you with everything I do, so some discretion was advised as well. I mean, how many times a month do you want to hear me say "I played a lot of tennis," or "I didn't do anything but clean the house this weekend"? Probably not many. I used to put more of that stuff up on Facebook, but not lately. I have been using my blog as the primary way to share what I am thinking about and doing, and leaving Facebook and Twitter as the places where I see what you are up to, and where I share interesting articles and so forth. It is easier to think before I post when I have to write it out here than when I just pop into Facebook and put up a quick status update. Less chance of regret.

Anyway, tomorrow is a new month, and I can guarantee I won't be posting every day. I'll aim for a few times a week though, so there will still occasionally be something worth reading.

A photo for Wednesday

2011-09-28T16:10:00.001-05:00

Photo by Michael Donovan

Ah Wednesday. The week is almost half-over, at last. Yup. That's about all I have to say about that for now. So, anyway, my parents visited France earlier this month, and my dad has some of his pictures up on his website. Go visit. They are so cool that I am even more annoyed that they didn't take me (their fully grown-up and independent daughter) along for the trip. There are days when I wish I was still living at home...

Changes, sigh

2011-09-27T12:00:00.000-05:00

I am a creature of habit, and I don't like change much. Changing seasons, OK. Changing clothes after going to the gym (and after a shower), OK. Changing the color of ink in my fountain pen, OK. Changing phone numbers, not so OK. Changing residences, not so OK (although I like being somewhere new, eventually). So, I am really getting sick of every single thing I use to organize my life on the interwebs changing. Now, not only do I have to adjust to the new settings on the Facebook feed, there are big changes coming for the profile in general - to make it, what? My memory? The keeper of my life events? That's the way I have heard it described. I use Facebook to keep in touch with friends and family in far-flung places (and to annoy people with lots of links to articles); I don't need or want it to be the keeper of my important events, memories and photos. So once again I am going to have to go through and change settings, adjust what I see in my feed and what I let others see. Already I use it less than I used to, and I don't see a new profile changing that.

And today, the promised/threatened migration of Delicious finally occurred. For those of you who don't know, Delicious is a social bookmarking site that allows you to save links/bookmarks and tag them, so they are available on any computer you use, and so you can share them with others (if you so desire). Because I often use two or three computers in a day, I primarily use it to organize all the sites I like to visit on a regular basis, like web comics and magazines and blogs so they are always up to date, no matter which machine I am on. I don't use it to share pages and links with other people. I do that on Twitter and Facebook (which is kind of the problem, to the Delicious developers). But, the new incarnation (which was made necessary because the original developer of Delicious was going to kill it, before another company took it over) is primarily designed to help you share links with other people, and to discover new things to read/look at that other people like. I really don't need anything else to read, and I don't particularly want to share everything I read with random strangers. Also, because the site is still in beta mode, a lot of the functions and features that I used every day are not working. The only way to sort my bookmarks is by date added. Honestly? I really don't know when I added things, and don't care. I look for something by its name (what a radical idea1). Not all the tags work correctly right now either. So, in an attempt to find something that works, I was forced to turn to my Google Bookmarks list, which I first set up when the future of Delicious was in doubt. But none of my tags carried over, so I had to go through and re-tag everything, and re-delete things I have deleted in the last few months. Which took time that I really should have been using to do something else. And I don't really like having every part of my life on Google - what if they suddenly decide (wrongly) that I am trouble and shut me out of my account? It has happened to people - their entire lives are disrupted.

Then too, Google Bookmarks really wants you to share everything with the public. What is with this need to share everything? Can't we just be by ourselves once in a while? Can't we keep the various aspects of our lives separate once in a while? I like compartments, I like organizing things to be separate that don't really belong together. I don't keep my food in the bathroom, and I don't keep my clothes in the living room. I like that I leave work behind at the end of the day, and I like that I can go to tennis and hang out with friends that don't know and don't care about what I do at work. These are things that keep me sane; it's the same online. For me, it isn't so much about privacy, although that is a valid concern; rather, I don't care about what other people do online, and cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would care what I am doing all the time. I do like to share - see all the articles I share on Twitter and Facebook, not to mention this blog - but sometimes, I like to use these tools just to make my life easier. And to do that, I don't want them to be constantly changing in ways that some faceless developer has determined will be "better."

Banned Books Week

2011-09-26T14:45:00.003-05:00

Did you know that we are smack in the middle of Banned Books Week? Well, we are. As a librarian/avid reader/liberal, I am very much anti-book banning, so I like Banned Books Week. There are plenty of arguments out there about why banning books (and movies and TV shows and video games and music) is just plain wrong (and stupid), and I am going to trust that you are internet-savvy enough to find them, if you so desire. Instead of adding my voice to that, and rambling on for days - which I am perfectly capable of doing - I will give you my brush with book banning:

When I was in 8th or 9th grade, a parent at my school tried to get a book banned from a class reading list, The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima, because it had naked ladies (actually, culturally-correct pearl divers) and a couple of teenagers tempted to have sex. My mom was on the curriculum committee at the time, and asked me to read the book and give her my opinion. I like to think that was because I was (a) very well-read, with good opinions about books, even back then, and (b) I had extremely well-developed common-sense for someone of my age group. (Mom, don't say anything that will disabuse me of this notion. I like the rosy-tinted view of my precocious self.) Anyway, I read the book, and although I don't really remember all that much about it (I can't remember most of the plot described in the Wikipedia summary), I do remember that it was not in any way worth banning. It didn't get banned, in the end (probably not because of my opinion, alas), which is as it should be.

The whole incident struck me then, as it does now, as incredibly ridiculous. The innocent child who could have been asked to read such filth was in junior high at the time, and the book was for a junior or senior level class. How did having such a book on a list harm that kid? No idea. (Besides, in high school, anything assigned in class is less likely to be read simply because it was assigned i.e. boring and homework, therefore, often skipped. A book you pick up on your own and read in private is one you want to read, and far more likely to be "dangerous"). Also, the book was in an elective class, not a required one. If the parent still had her panties in a bunch over the book by the time the student got to that point, in 4 or 5 years, she could have just not allowed the child to take that class. That is how people should react to something they don't approve of - by not reading it, not by trying to force other people to stop reading it. (Of course, I also think we should expose ourselves to things we don't generally approve of before we make the choice to continue with our dislike, but that is another point for another day). Not to mention that the mother couldn't protect/shield/pamper/mess up her kid for ever.

There are plenty of books and TV shows that I don't approve of for whatever reason, but unless they are primarily hate-speech and require some sort of active response, I don't read them, I don't watch them; it is my choice to make. I don't think books should be banned, because suppressing an idea or opposing viewpoint doesn't allow for discussion, for debate, for exposure of alternatives. It provides a false sense that everyone believes the same thing, that we all ought to live in lock-step with one another. We don't. We shouldn't. In a country that prides itself on being the country of "liberty and justice for all," the free exchange of ideas and viewpoints is a vital necessity. Even for junior high students. So, go read something that has been banned, and flaunt it!

Umm, yeah, Friday

2011-09-23T10:48:00.002-05:00

Picture by Candace Donovan

This has been a long week. The weather has been all over the place - up to the upper 80s for a couple of days, then down to 50 last night; sunny one minute, pouring rain the next. One co-worker has been on vacation all week, so my daily schedule is all switched around, which adds to the slight discombobulation caused by all the technological changes on Netflix, Facebook, and Pandora (yeah, they changed stuff too, but I actually like their changes, so I haven't complained). This weekend promises to be busy, as they all have been recently. Oh, and I just thought of something - the rain means the grass will be growing again and the lawn will need mowing. Drat.

Anyway, I'm not feeling too chatty, and I am sure you don't really care for the minutiae of my daily existence. So enjoy this lovely picture of bread (which is making me hungry) that my mother took recently in France, and have a good weekend. I may or may not be here.

Funny things to Read

2011-09-21T14:06:00.000-05:00

I am still feeling like Grouchy McCrankypants - Facebook's newest change is not helping - but there are still things that make me smile. Here are a few of them, in no particular order:

Unshelved - a cartoon by and about libraries and librarians. Some days, I swear they are spying on my office to get their material.
Sheldon - another great web comic with a boy genius, a talking duck, a cranky grandfather and Flaco. Squee!
Cute Overload - pictures of cute animals. Need I say more?
Disapproving Rabbits - of cute rabbits looking disapproving.
Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me - the weekly NPR news quiz. It's kind of like the Daily Show, on the radio.

OK. So those are things that make me happy. What about you?

Grouchy McCrankypants

2011-09-20T11:24:00.000-05:00

Yup, that's me today. I am still irritated about the recycling thing from yesterday, and the whole Netflix debacle. I didn't really mind the price hike earlier this summer - I can afford an extra $6 a month, and if I couldn't I shouldn't have it in the first place - but the splitting of the two parts of Netflix into a DVD company and a streaming company just piss me off. We use both, and I agree with Farhad Manjoo's observations 100%:

I think it's an idiotic strategy. Most of Netflix's customers subscribe to both DVDs and streaming, and if they're like me, they like the service because it enables both not-so-picky instant gratification and well-considered delayed gratification. I use the DVD service to select movies that I really want to watch and am willing to wait for; I use the streaming service when I want to watch something—and pretty much anything—right now. I can keep doing this after the DVD plan is renamed Qwikster, but it will require more work. If I search for a movie on Qwikster, it won't tell me that the movie can be seen for free, right now, on Netflix. If I search for a movie on Netflix and don't find it, it won't let me add it to my DVD queue. Say I watch a bunch of DVDs starring Kevin Spacey and then give them all a one-star rating. (I can't stand Kevin Spacey.) Because the two services will have separate ratings databases, Netflix might just recommend that I watch a Spacey marathon.

Add to that Rick Perry's ascendency into the Republican front-runner, despite/because of the incredibly hateful and stupid things he has done, like cutting funds for women's health clinics, and anything else related to the 2012 presidential race, and I am just flat out cranky.

In an ideal world, I would just shut myself away from the radio, newspaper, internet and other people for an indefinite amount of time until I felt better, or at least until I was feeling slightly more charitable towards the human race. Instead, I am stuck going about my normal routine without biting someone's head off or shooting myself in the foot. Sigh.

Tennis again, and a recycling rant

2011-09-19T14:22:00.001-05:00

The fall tennis flex league starts this week, so tennis will be taking up more time in schedule again for a while. I've only been going to one class a week, and not playing outside of that since the end of July. I have a match today after work, and Benjamin played two matches this weekend. At least the weather is a lot cooler than it was this summer!

In other news... I thought I had read an announcement that our local public works was going to be distributing new recycling bins this fall that would hold a lot of recyclables and wouldn't require sorting, like my parents have in Bellevue. Can I tell you how much I want this? A lot. Currently, the only recycling Maumelle has curbside is newspapers and aluminum cans. Totally useless to me - we don't get a newspaper, and don't use many cans. You can take other recyclables to the recycling center/transfer station, but they have to be separated by type, and I don't think they take glass. When you don't have city-provided bins for keeping things separate, it is a total pain in the neck to do so - we've tried. Anyway, so today I finally got fed up waiting for news from the city about this and emailed the public works department. And found that I was wrong. They have no plans to change the system that is in place, and "In order for recycling efforts to be cost-effective and not end up in the landfills, the materials must be sorted." Which is, as Bellevue shows, totally false. Not to mention that Conway's drop-off doesn't make you sort anything except glass. So I guess we will have to continue doing what we have been doing, and taking monthly trips to Conway with our cars full of recycling. I have been unable to properly recycle anything at my own home since I moved away from home in 2001 - in Austin, our apartments never recycled anything, so we had to take everything to a recycling center there too - and I am getting tired of it. I mean, how many other people in Maumelle actually bother to take any recycling to the drop-off center? Probably not that many. I do, but I am close to what my cousin (who is one himself) calls a hippy nut-job (I have two compost bins and a worm bin - definitely hippy nut-job). In this advanced day and age, we should have smaller garbage cans and larger recycling bins, and I should have to sort my recycling. Simple things to save the earth, like recycling, should be getting easier, not harder.

2011 Reading Challenges Update

2011-09-16T11:38:00.001-05:00

Whoops. Looks like I forgot to post anything yesterday. Sorry ('cause I know you are all heartbroken.)

Today, after finishing the marvelous Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor, I added it to my "books read in 2011" list on Goodreads, and discovered that it was the 111th book I have finished this year. That was my original goal for the entire year, back in January. I will clearly blow past it by the end of the year - I mean, I still have 3 1/2 months of reading to go - so I revised my goal up to 140. If I meet it, it would be the most I have ever read (at least since I have been keeping track, which means probably ever). Benjamin is a little skeptical, since I have read a lot of graphic novels and manga this year - he says I should remove them from the total. But I don't want to do that - I read them, didn't I? And they are published as books - they have ISBN numbers and everything. So they stay. It is my own challenge, so I can set the arbitrary rules.

The other challenge I joined this year was to read 12 books that had been sitting on my "to read" shelf for over a year (here's my original post about the challenge). So far, I have read 7 of the 12, and I am currently in the middle of the 8th. I managed the two longest a while ago, and 3 of the 4 I haven't started yet are not long. But one of the ones left is Madame Bovary, and it isn't exactly short. I think I am going to listen to that one on my iPod, since I found an unabridged addition on Audible.

If I do manage to read 140 books, I am most likely setting an almost impossible bar for myself. I doubt I will be reading quite so many graphic novels and manga all at one time again, for one thing. Ah well. The important thing is that I will have a challenge for the future.

Procrastination much?

2011-09-14T15:42:00.001-05:00

My watch is fixed! Yes, this is a big deal because the battery went out, oh, probably (at least) a year ago, and I have not managed to get around to fixing it until today. And it was strictly because I kept putting it off/telling myself it was too much trouble. I don't tend to procrastinate on important things, but things like getting a watch battery fixed and washing the outside of my house windows, even when they are driving me batty, tend to get pushed off into the future.

For the watch, I didn't know of a jewelry store that was easily accessible during my daily/weekly schedule of errands and work. Any errand that is not something I do on a normal basis is "difficult," and therefore subject to procrastination - I am a creature with deeply ingrained habits and routines. Having to drive somewhere different or do a non-routine weekend errand is a big production, at least in my own head. Never mind that I could have found a jeweler nearby on the internet in less than five minutes, and easily gone by after work as a slight detour. Yes, I know I am completely irrational at times - Benjamin, being pretty darn logical and a philosopher, finds my brain completely mystifying. (Not that he doesn't procrastinate on certain things himself... *washing his car* ahem.)

Anyway, I had a dentist appointment this morning not far from a known (to me) jewelry shop, and I remembered to take my watch with me. Since I had the time, I stopped by and got it fixed. Yay. And no, it really wasn't that hard.

An apple a day...

2011-09-13T16:40:00.000-05:00

Photo by Michael Donovan

My office has decided to join a state-run plan to get employees exercising and eating more fruits and vegetables. There are rewards for doing so, and I already do everything it requires, so I could probably clean up when it comes to tallying exercise and eating right, but I am not going to join. Why? Because there are certain things I am willing to do in life, and certain things I am not. Willing to do: get up at 5 AM to go to the gym, even when I have only had 5 good hours of sleep. Not willing to do: fill in a daily log of exercise and food. To their credit, you don't have to set (and reach) a goal to get rewards, which would really piss me off - you just have to do the good stuff and record it. But, even years ago when I was actively trying to modify my diet and lose weight, I refused to count calories or keep a food log (for more than a day or two). Partially, this is because of my perfectionist tendencies - it is so inexact to log in my exercise using only the two categories of "cardio" or "strength/flexibility;" where does one put fencing, for example? And tennis? Yes, it has cardio advantages, but it isn't the same as running or an aerobics class. I find the lack of granularity and detail maddening. Same with the fruit and vegetables counting. How does one count vegetables in a casserole? Or in a sandwich? I get kind of paralyzed by the details. Partially, I don't want to turn everything into a spreadsheet. I already record everything I read, I have a blog, I have a journal. While my dad may keep track of the number of times he mows the lawn each summer, or how many times he fills his car each year, I am not ready to be that obsessive. It gets boring after a while. Partially, it is just me being contrary. If I am doing something on my own, and someone comes along and tells me I should continue to do so, but also keep track, I don't want to. Even if it would get me extra time off. I am just that obtuse. Not that I am going to stop exercising or anything, I just don't want to do it their way.

Also, I am not interested in the program because I already have all the good habits they want to foster. If the program gets more people in my building to exercise and eat better, great. But since there is no push in the program to actually remove bad habits (apart from smoking) such as drinking sugary sodas for breakfast (or sweet tea - this is the South, after all), and no incentives for eating whole grains and less meat, I am not sure how effective it will be in changing the overall health of people in the office. I suppose I will just have to be happy that at least they are trying. Some change is better than none, after all.

Oh Monday

2011-09-12T13:23:00.001-05:00

As the more observant of you might notice, I didn't post anything yesterday, which means that I won't make my goal of posting every single day in September. Since it was a completely arbitrary self-imposed challenge, it doesn't really mean much in the grand scheme of things. I didn't write because I spent most of the day actively avoiding the computer and radio and anything else news related. I didn't write because I don't have anything original or important to say about the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Yes, I remember exactly where I was and what I did that day, but those are my memories and I prefer to keep them that way, rather than using them to create a false sense of empathy or connection. Maybe, one day, if I have children and they study 9/11 in school and want to know, maybe then I will share, but they don't need to be out in the ether of the internet. So consider my lack of posting yesterday as my own moment of silence. If you feel the need to read something about the anniversary and what the attacks have meant for us as a nation, read this excellent "Ask the Pilot" column on Salon.

In other news, today seemed determined to assert itself as a MONDAY, and a full-moon Monday at that. Despite keeping myself very busy yesterday and making myself very tired, I had trouble falling asleep (in part from the brightness of the goldurned moon peeking through the slats of the blinds in my bedroom) and got far too little sleep last night. Adding insult to that injury, I woke up 20 minutes before my alarm normally goes off, which meant I was awake at 4:40 AM. I don't know about you, but I tend to break the morning and night into chunks that I classify as "early" "far too early" and "still the middle of the night." Since I regularly get up at 5 AM, that really should only classify as early, and some days it does. Other days though, it is far too early. But no matter what, anything that falls within the 4 AM time-slot is still kind of the middle of the night to me. Sigh. (Of course, this also applies to sleeping in. For me, sleeping until 6 AM on a weekday qualifies as sleeping in, while 7 or 7:30 on a weekend means I have slept until an ungodly late hour. The cats seem to agree and take pains to get me up close to my normal time. Sigh again.)

Anyway...what my general lack of sleep meant is that I am starting the week off already tired. I did make it to the gym for a 2-mile run and a session in the weight room, but if I had been less tired and moving better, I could have probably done 3 miles. And Monday decided that it was having fun with me, so it made me get bright pink strawberry smoothie on my expensive, hand-made white skirt. It also dropped an uncooked egg off the kitchen counter, but that was part of Benjamin's Monday, not mine exactly. As he said, maybe he unconsciously did it to make me feel better. And there was traffic. Sigh.

Other than all that, I am actually peachy. Or as peachy as a pessimistic, cynical, Eeyore clone ever gets. And at least I didn't spill my scalding tea all over myself.

Since I haven't got any pictures of my own, enjoy one of my dad's. He is currently in France and sending occasional updates. As soon as he gets home, there will be plenty more where that came from, up on his website. (Sorry in advance about the surfing wizard .gif. He likes it...)

Sick computer still sick

2011-09-10T20:33:00.000-05:00

So, my computer is still broken. We took it to the Apple store today, to no avail. Part of the problem is that my computer is now 6 years old, and Apple no longer sells parts or software for it. The guy at the genius bar tried to get it to a point where he could load something onto it, but the computer wouldn't even recognize that drive. I brought it home, dug around in my stuff until I found the original start-up disk, and tried to reinstall the operating system...Nothing. Sigh. It has been a good computer, but I have a feeling that it has had it. If so, I am contemplating replacing it with an iPad, instead of a full computer. Since we have another computer (the one I am using right now), and I don't do any real work on my computer, I have a hard time justifying a brand new laptop. The iPad will have to wait for a while though - they aren't cheap, and I am going to have to be pretty desperate before I can talk myself out of that much money for a toy. Puritan guilt - I've got plenty of it. Anyway, at least I have seen the new Apple store - it looks like any other Apple store, but since it isn't in a mall (well, it is, sort of, but an outdoor one) it is bigger and less squished than the others I have been in. Whee.

Friday video

2011-09-09T17:29:00.000-05:00

Leverage is one of my favorite shows on TV right now. Since it is Friday, and I don't have anything else to say, watch this, then go get the full series.

Cherie Priest - go read her books

2011-09-08T16:41:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite authors right now is Cherie Priest. I am in the middle of two of her books (one I'm reading with Benjamin and one on my own) and there is another one due out at the end of the month or beginning of next month. Since she writes in a lot of different genres, I can't really describe her as having one style. But she writes really good female characters and snappy dialog, and plain, old, really good stories. The most famous series is the Clockwork Century - Boneshaker, Clementine, Dreadnought, and coming soon, Ganymede. They are set in an alternate history where the Civil War is still being fought in the 1880s, and Seattle is infested with zombies.

This cover is from the one that just came out on Tuesday, a sequel to Bloodshot. It is also set in Seattle (at least partially), and has vampires (who definitely don't sparkle), a ex-Navy SEAL drag queen, and lots of action.

Anyway, you should go read something of hers. You will thank me.

Labor Day at Bell Slough

2011-09-07T19:45:00.000-05:00

We considered going for a proper hike on Monday, since the weather was so nice, but decided that we had too much to get done at home to allow us to take so long on an excursion. Instead, we headed up to the Bell Slough - a wildlife management area between Maumelle and Conway.

It's purpose is to provide a resting area for waterfowl and other birds as they migrate. (Although hunting is allow in the area, so I am not sure how restful it really is). It also has a nice trail that loops around for approximately 3 miles through oak trees and other typical Arkansas forest terrain.

Miikka loves hiking here - there is always so much to smell. He was practically quivering with excitement when we got out of the car and headed for the trail at a run, towing me along behind. When we hike, we have an established order - Benjamin first, followed by Miikka, with me bringing up the rear. Sometimes Miikka tries to take the lead, but he is so often distracted or side-tracked by an interesting smell, and he stops so suddenly that he causes pile-ups. If Benjamin takes the leash, Miikka is worried that I am not right behind him. So: Benjamin, Miikka, Hope.

There were some wildflowers blooming along the path, although it hasn't rained for a few weeks.

The best part of Bell Slough is that even though it is right next to the freeway, and is in easy driving distance of Conway and Little Rock, there are almost never too many people (and by too many, I mean anyone other than us). It is easy to slip into nature for a little while, breathe in the clean air, and relax. This trip, we saw two other people, but only from a distance. Perfect.

Trying to do too much

2011-09-06T10:46:00.000-05:00

Lately, I have this feeling like I am trying to do too many things. Too many new things, to be specific. Since January, I have taken up running, tennis (well, that goes back to November, but it didn't get serious until this year), yoga, and fencing. At the same time I am still trying to go to the gym for weight training a couple of mornings a week, and to do tai chi often enough that I don't forget any of it, and meditate for at least 20 minutes most days (not necessarily because I want to be more enlightened, but because I want to keep panic attacks and crippling anxiety attacks at bay without going back on anti-depressants). I also miss my bassoon, which, I am horrified to admit, I have not touched in at least 2 years, nor played regularly since we left Austin. The garden needs work too. Honestly, I don't have that much time. I work full time, have a dog, three cats, a chinchilla and a husband who all need and deserve my attention as well. Not to mention my bed, which has a standing appointment every night, and is feeling slighted.

I am really enjoying all the new activities and the friends I am making through them, but I don't think this level of activity is sustainable. Nothing is getting my full attention, because I am too busy doing something else to practice anything. I really want to get better at tennis and fencing and yoga, and not lose proficiency in tai chi, and not forget how to play my bassoon, but each one of those is enough to be a full-time hobby on its own. If pressed, I could come up with very good reasons for sticking with every activity - tennis is a sport I have wanted to play for a while and it takes the place of racquetball (which I also miss, but which is sort of a pain to play around here, and Benjamin and I were tired of only playing each other), and I am on a team with fun teammates and a great coach. Fencing is another sport I have been interested in trying for a while, and Benjamin loves it and really wants me to love it as well, and so far, I do. Last week was the first time I actually got to fence, and it was fun - A 12 year-old beat me, but it was fun. Running is really just an extension of the cardio exercise I was doing at the gym, but more intense (and it takes longer for me to run 3 miles than it does to use an elliptical for 30 minutes, which is why scheduling of my gym trips is becoming a problem). Yoga is a good relaxer and strength-building activity, and boy do I need the flexibility work it provides. So, I can't choose; I don't even begin to know how to choose.

I guess it is a good problem to have, since it means I have the money to pay for all these hobbies, and the time to at least attend the practices and classes. And it is obviously a problem of someone without children, because if I had children, I would probably be more worried about them being over-scheduled than worrying about my own activities. But the middle-class, privileged nature of the problem doesn't really make it less of a problem for me right at this moment. For the moment, at least, I will continue with all these activities, and I will continue to drive myself crazy with my attempts to do everything (which rather negates the fun, stress-relieving purpose of hobbies), but one of these days I am going to have to make some choices. Sigh.

Uh oh...

2011-09-05T18:01:00.001-05:00

My poor computer is sick right now. It is 5 years old, and last night, while I was reading something on the web, it went blank. Since it was late, I didn't want to deal with it. This morning, when I started it, I got the blue screen of death. I figured out that I can open it in safe mode, but that means I can't connect to the internet. Good thing we have another computer. Next weekend I guess I will have to take the poor thing to the (brand new) Apple store and see if someone can make it work properly again. It is probably a software issue, but I have no idea how to fix it, even with the "helpful" ideas on the Apple page.

In other news: it didn't rain, but the temperature is just about perfect today. We took Miikka for a walk at the Bell Slough - there will be pictures eventually. Maybe tomorrow or Wednesday. I re-potted a couple of plants, put together a new bookshelf, got some laundry done, with Benjamin's help cleaned the house. So much for not doing anything this weekend.

The weather is supposed to be really nice all week, but I predict we will have at least another week of really hot weather before fall comes in for good. But at least we know it is on its way.

Oliver is in a hat

2011-09-04T16:01:00.000-05:00

I have had a request for more pictures of Cleo and Oliver, but since they rarely leave the bedroom or do anything photogenic these days, you get a few older pictures. We are heading to a potluck for Benjamin's philosophy department, and there is a chance of rain. Such is your weekend update.

In the meantime, Oliver is in a hat. Your argument is invalid.

Not going to fail this soon

2011-09-03T21:05:00.001-05:00

Ha! Thought I forgot all about blogging today, didn't you. Well, OK, I did, for a while. But I am here now, a good three hours before midnight. Not that I have anything particularly interesting or illuminating to say today, so this is a little stream of consciousness. I've been awfully busy so far, for a weekend in which I said I was going to do nothing. When you have a three-day weekend, everyone always asks if you have any big plans. I do it to other people, they do it to me. I usually say no - because I hate doing "big things" at the same time that everyone else in the area is doing the same "big thing." I mean, I love camping, but I would never voluntarily go camping on Labor Day or Memorial Day (umm, although that is exactly what we did this past Memorial Day...but the river we camped by was packed, so it proves my point a little). Too many people also taking that opportunity to get back to nature. I might be willing to go to a museum or something, if there was an exhibit I was interested in. Generally though, I prefer to stay home and relax on a three-day weekend.

But there isn't anything like that this weekend, and I planned to not be busy. But I spent most of the day out, at a tennis lesson, running errands. Good thing I have an extra day, although, we are thinking of going for a hike, if it isn't raining. Hike, I said, not camping. So I am not really breaking my own rule.

Time to go relax for a little bit before bedtime. Tomorrow I have to wash a cat, so I will need my rest!

Book Report: The Reading Promise

2011-09-02T10:22:00.003-05:00

Since I promised to write every day this month, it seems appropriate to start the month off with a book about a promise: The Reading Promise by Alice Ozma. You may have heard of this book when it came out earlier this year - Alice and her father started reading together when she was in elementary school, and continued, every day, until she left for college. This book is about The Streak, as they called it, but it is also about the importance of reading and books and family.

Overall, I give the book 3 1/2 stars out of 5. I love the topic and the idea of a reading streak. Both my parents read to me while I was growing up, but not every single night for years, and at some point, I started reading aloud to my mother while she was driving me to and from my music lessons and orchestra rehearsals and on road trips. Then I started reading to Benjamin while we were dating, and we still read together. So, obviously I approve. I enjoyed the way Alice Ozma (yes, both names from books, yes, bother actually her names - the middle ones. And she said she liked them together, so I will go ahead and refer to her that way) used the days of The Streak as markers for important events in her life. But...I sort of wished she said more about the books themselves, about what they were reading, about how she felt about those books. She admits that they didn't even really keep track of everything that they read (augh! How could you not do that?!) That isn't what this book is, but that is sort of what I hoped for from the subtitle. More my problem than the books though.

One problem I had, apart from that, was the dialog. I simply couldn't find it believable at times that a child would speak the way Alice Ozma records herself as speaking, and I can't believe that she remembered conversations that clearly. I know that recreating conversations is not unusual in memoirs, so my problem isn't with that, exactly; it is more that the 10 year old Alice Ozma at the beginning of the book sounds an awful lot like the 20 year old Alice Ozma at the end of the book, or like dialog written by an adult who doesn't know any children. Yes, she read a lot and had a big vocabulary. So did I, and I certainly don't think I ever sounded like that. It is just a bit too precocious and precious.

Overall though, I enjoyed the book. It was an easy read, and it is a great testament to reading aloud together. I think teachers, librarians, and parents would enjoy it. If you are interested in more information about the book or Alice Ozma and the Reading Promise that is in the back of the book, you can visit her website: Make a Reading Promise.

30 Days Hath September

2011-09-01T11:25:00.001-05:00

First off, can I just say Wahoo! We have survived August, and are blessed with September. I learned yesterday that while astronomers use the equinoxes as the markers for seasons, most meteorologists use months. So summer is June, July, and August, and autumn is September, October and November. Makes tons of sense to me. That is what most people do too, I would imagine. Being a stickler, I tend to go with the astronomer's version, but only because it is canon. If someone else uses a different scale, I can "allow" myself to as well. Yes, I am that strange.

Clouds, somewhere over Arkansas or Texas

As a reward for reaching September mostly unscathed from the summer, I am setting myself the task of blogging every day this month, even the weekends. I'll try to have something interesting to say at least 80% of the time, and pictures too. I have a few more cloud pictures from the Hawaii trip, and now that cooler weather is a possibility (not necessarily a reality, but a girl can at least hope in September) there might even be hiking and the attendant pictures.

A quick reading update: I have read 96 books so far this year. At this pace, I will blow by my goal of 110 by the beginning of October. I might have to count pages next year though, because my count is a leeetle inflated by some of the manga and short graphic novels I have been reading lately. But page counts might be edging just a tad into obsessive, maybe...

Hawaii Part 4

2011-08-31T13:09:00.001-05:00

Mokoli'i Island, photo by Benjamin

One day, we drove to the North Shore of Oahu. At certain times of the year, the North Shore is where all the really big surfing goes on. When we were there, the waves were pretty small, so no surfing. But we did go snorkeling. No pictures from that, unfortunately. We stopped at a park where you could see Mokoli'i Island. Benjamin had kayaked there on an excursion with members of his program. This time, we just observed from a distance.

Mountains to the south of Mokoli'i/Kaneohe Bay.

Here's a red-crested cardinal that we saw at the park. Neat - not native, but neat.

We were staying in the Manoa Valley, where the University of Hawaii at Manoa is located. At the top of the valley is the Lyon Arboretum, a university-owned arboretum. Of course we had to visit it, and we did, on our last morning.

This was a little more like what I was expecting from Hawaii - tropical, rainy jungle. We didn't get to see nearly enough of the gardens, since there were tons of little paths wandering through the forests, and we had to stay on the main one due to time constraints. But what we saw was very cool.

This is a Thai-style walking Buddha statue in the gardens.

Manoa Falls. Photograph by Benjamin

Right next to the arboretum was Manoa Falls. I didn't get a chance to take the hike, but Benjamin did with some of the other people in the program. No-one paid any attention to the danger signs. Including Benjamin.

Photo by Benjamin

This is a statue of Qin Shi Huangdi, the first emperor of China. Although this was a Chinese cemetery, there is no explanation of why the statue is there. There were a lot of statues around Honolulu though, so I guess it isn't really out of place.

And one last look at Benjamin, standing by the Center for Korean Studies on the University of Hawaii campus. He was in Hawaii for three weeks for work purposes before I came to visit and bring him home.

Now that I am done with my Hawaii pictures (I took a lot more, of course, but I won't subject you to those unless you come to visit us) I will have to find something else to blog about. Ah well, fall is almost here, and with it (slightly) cooler weather, so hopefully we will be able to do some hiking soon.

Hawaii, Part 3

2011-08-29T17:38:00.000-05:00

One of the days in Hawaii, we drove out to the westernmost tip of Oahu, to Kaena Point. It just goes to show how different the various areas of the island are; Honolulu and the Manoa Valley are pretty lush, while this side was much more scrubby and dry.

The point is a sort of wildlife reserve, specifically for birds and Monk Seals. Because the birds that nest in the area did not evolve with predators and nest on the ground, they are vulnerable to introduced pests, such as mongoose, so this fence was built across the point to keep them out.

To get to the point, you go through this air-lock like contraption. Pretty cool actually.

There are tide pools and some vegetation on the point, and presumably, at the right time of year, birds. We didn't see anything nesting, since it was the middle of August.

We did, however, see some Monk Seals. They were sunning themselves on the rocks, and weren't particularly active. It was the middle of the day, after all.

After we hiked back to the beach from the point, we took a cue from the seals and sunned ourselves and floated in the water. I didn't like everything about Hawaii, but I did enjoy having the ocean so near, and I could easily get used to floating in the ocean every day.

Hawaii Pictures Part 2

2011-08-26T14:29:00.000-05:00

So, as I said previously, we are big nerds when it comes to arboreta and botanical gardens. On our honeymoon, we managed to spend about 5 hours in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, and every time we go visit my parents in Bellevue, we have to stop by the Bellevue Botanical Gardens. And it is not uncommon for Benjamin to stop on a hike to examine a tree (hey, his dad is a forester and he was a forest fire fighter in college. He comes by his interest honestly).

Benjamin, trying to blend in.

All that is to say that we are pretty used to looking at trees. But the trees in Hawaii, wow. I have never seen so many enormous trees. The one pictured above is big all right, but it probably wasn't the biggest. And the other thing about these giants is that they are not really that old. Most of the gardens we toured weren't planted until the early to mid-20th century, so they were, at most 120 years old! Just. Wow.

Not only were there enormous trees, there were also some very weird trees. Like this one, which is only improved by the signs. According to the self-guided tour flyer we had, the cannonballs are bluish inside, and smell really bad.

These things really are about the size of cannonballs, and it would be extremely unpleasant to be conked on the head by one.

One of the gardens had a ton of epiphytes.The tree in the picture below is actually all epiphyte, just hanging out on a dead stump.

I had no idea how many different varieties of palms there are. The ones we probably all think of when we hear "palm tree" are Caribbean Royal Palms, and as their name suggests, they are from the Caribbean. I didn't really get a good picture of one, because they are so tall, and pointing a camera into the sun isn't really a good way to take photos. But they do have a very strange, um, appendage called the crownshaft, which we noticed on some trees on campus before we got to the gardens, and which we both thought looked rather phallic. Benjamin doesn't really have a dirty mind, so if he saw one and thought that, well...

Anyway, returning to other palms - there are many, many varieties in the world, of all shapes and sizes. Some are short and stout, while others are reeeeeeaaalllly tall.

And finally, since I seem to be going all classy today sarcasm, here is a photo of a sausage tree too.

Yup, those things that look like corn dogs are actually fruit, hanging on peduncles (which is now my new favorite word). Apparently baboons and giraffes like to eat them.

Next time I will give the flora a rest and give you some scenery.

Oops

2011-08-25T16:38:00.000-05:00

I have more pictures, but it is almost the end of the work day, and I don't have time to put them up today. Sorry, you will just have to wait until tomorrow.

In other news...no, I don't really have anything else. Life is pretty boring around here at the moment (I'm not saying that as a bad thing, just a fact). Uhh, the weather cooled off enough for us to take Miikka for a walk, and he might just get another one today. So, yeah, tomorrow with the pictures.

Hawaii Pictures Part 1

2011-08-23T14:17:00.000-05:00

Dragon fruit

This time, I don't really feel like giving you a day-by-day account of our trip to Hawaii, but I don't mind sharing pictures.

Eucalyptus tree bark

Most of these are from our visits to botanical gardens (yes, we made multiple trips to botanical gardens. We are nerds, get over it).

Supposed to be upright, but honestly, don't feel like fixing it, again.

Looking up at a tree from below.

Star fruit

Orchid

Pepper corns

Pineapple

I'm Back

2011-08-22T10:57:00.000-05:00

I'm back. Now that August is more than half over, I don't have as much to whine about. The weather is a teensy bit more bearable (well, this weekend was grossly muggy, but only 94, not 104). And I have, or will have as soon as I get them off the camera, pictures.

Benjamin starts teaching again this week, and I am trying to get myself back into school-year habits as well. It's funny - I am not in school any longer, and the only way it really touches me directly is that Benjamin is up earlier in the mornings, but I still structure my life around the school calendar year. For example: I am trying to get myself out of the house earlier than I have been for the last 3 months. Now, in part this is because everyone else in the area is also getting out earlier because school has started everywhere and parents are dropping kids off and whatnot, but partially it is because I recognize that I have let myself slide, because it is summer. It isn't fall yet, and I refuse to say it is until late September - I am a stickler for the actual solstice-defined seasons - but it is school time now, so I have to behave accordingly.

Anyway, school-time habits include being a better blogger, as well as getting back into a proper schedule at the gym. I ran about 3.5 miles this morning, after not running for over a week. The first mile was hard, physically, and I walked for a few minutes after it, but I plugged along and eventually it got easier. Mentally, i knew I could do it, since I have already done it, so it was really just a matter of not stopping. Yay!

The reason I didn't go running, and another reason I took a break here, was that we were in Hawaii last week. Benjamin had been there for 3 weeks already at a sort of summer school for professors when I joined him. Everyone asks how the trip was, and when I say "It was pretty good," they all want to know why it wasn't absolutely fabulous. Short answer? Too many other people, everywhere. Yeah, I probably should have expected that, since it is Hawaii, but the problems caused by so many people still caught me by surprise. But since I doubt you want to hear my rants about tourists and bad civil engineering decisions (seriously - who hides the entrance to a freeway like that?!), I will restrict myself to showing you pictures of all the fun stuff we did. Once I have the pictures off the camera. Hey- I got back on Thursday, worked on Friday, and was busy this weekend. Give me a break! It's on my calendar for tonight...

Bad blogger, lazy blogger

2011-08-11T09:01:00.000-05:00

Can I tell you a not-so-secret? I hate August. It is too hot, all the pretty plants have died and everything turns brown. It has been too hot for our tomatoes, even the specialty varieties I planted that were supposed to be drought tolerant, and the only things growing in the garden right now are basil and collard greens. As a friend said, there is a reason the poor folk in the south eat lots of collard greens - they tolerate, even love, the heat, and go all summer.

The heat also makes it difficult to go out and do anything worth blogging about, like hiking, and to add to the depressing factor, the airwaves are full of ads and stories about going back to school (where I come from, no-one in the right minds goes back to school until just about Labor Day, but here they go back next week!). So apart from complaining about the terrible heat wave and drought we are in here in Arkansas, I really have nothing to say. Although, we have had rain and thunderstorms every day this week, which had taken a little of the edge of the heat and dryness. But it is still too humid...

Anyway, all this is to say that I probably won't have anything to say for a week or two. You can always check back to see if I re-surface, but don't be disappointed if I don't.

One last set of Philadelphia pictures

2011-08-05T15:16:00.001-05:00

Ha - thought I was done with Philadelphia, did you? Well, I have a bunch more, but I am getting rather tired of posting them, so I will just give you one last set.

I was actually there for a reason - the Special Libraries Association Annual Conference. Which Philadelphia put on the flyers that were hanging on the streetlights around the city. I presume that the purpose is two-fold: to welcome the visitors, and to let the locals know which group of weirdos has taken over the convention center that week.

This is a scale model of the convention center itself. Can you tell how huge it is? It covers at least three blocks, and crosses the street to another section as well (that domed building to the back left). The conference was only in the left end of the building, but I walked the length of it outside several times.

Double click on the picture to see it larger. This is the domed area, what used to be the Reading Train Terminal. That is a wood ceiling. It is huge. See the booth in the center? That was at least 6 feet tall.

And right next door to the convention center (and my hotel) was my favorite place in Philadelphia - the Reading Terminal Market. For those of you who have been to Seattle, it is sort of a smaller version of Pike Place Market, with Amish vendors (well, some of the vendors are Amish anyway). I bought loose-leaf tea, pastries, pizza, fruit, bread, breakfast (mmm...crepes - forgot to take a picture, I was too busy eating) and lunch there. If I lived in Philadelphia, I would be hard pressed not to spend every Saturday morning there...

So that is most of my trip to Philadelphia. Who knows what I will post about next week. Maybe the heat - we have hit 100 every day this week, and Wednesday we broke the all-time record for Little Rock, with 114. I am so ready for fall...

Record Heat

2011-08-03T14:23:00.000-05:00

So, Little Rock just created a new heat record - 112 F. Yay us? Last night when I got home, I went out to the backyard to water some plants and let Miikka play in the water, but I had to run the hose for a good 4 minutes before it was cool enough to do either. Seriously, I could have made a cup of tea with the water that was coming out. And forget about a truly cold shower right now.

Philadelphia Gay Pride Parade

2011-08-01T13:29:00.000-05:00

Before I get to the pictures of rainbow poodles and drag queens who have way better hair and makeup than I, quick re-cap of my tennis weekend, for anyone who is actually interested. I lost both my matches, but one I feel disappointed about my performance and one I don't. Friday night, I lost 5-7, 0-6. That one, I feel bad about; the first set was a mental battle for me, and I had been up 5-3 at one point, before collapsing. The second set was all about me mentally giving up. The woman I played was definitely better than me (she went on to play in the final match), but I should have been able to at least get a game or two from her in that second set. Ah well. learning experience. The second match was Saturday, and I lost that one 6-4, 3-6, 0-1 (8-10 tiebreak). I don't feel bad about that one at all. The other player was a bit better than me, but we were still pretty evenly matched. I fought. And it was about 100, no shade, at 10:30-12:30 in the middle of the day. So that was my first tournament. I have my eye on one in October, one in which Benjamin and I can play mixed doubles together.

Back to Philadelphia. The Sunday when I was doing all my sightseeing also happened to be the day of the Philadelphia Gay Pride Parade. I didn't realize this until I was eating my cheese steak on a sidewalk table and groups of people began to claim other tables and line up on the sidewalk across the street. There was an excellent Lady Gaga - tried to get a picture, but I didn't have the right lens with me. I watched from my table for a while, but there were gaps between all the groups and floats - the city hadn't completely shut down the cross streets, so the floats would have to wait for cars to pass, and the groups all stopped farther up the route to vamp for the judges (or whatever you call that when they hang out in front of the judges table). I left and walked around for a while, then wound my way up to the head of the parade and grabbed a few more shots of floats.

This marching band was pretty good, although I can't remember what they were playing. I mostly liked the twirlers though.

Someone dyed their poodle herd in rainbow colors. The little pink one looks pretty happy - show-off! Personally, I can't imagine trying to dye a poodle - I have enough trouble getting Miikka bathed without adding a hair treatment!

I have no idea what this float was for - a nightclub maybe? I got a picture of another one that was definitely advertising a night club, but it was perhaps a bit much for my poor little blog.

I think this one was in honor of gay and lesbian members of the military, but I could be wrong. The two ladies on the left look way better in those nurse outfits than I ever would, that's for sure. The one in with the red bandana looks an awful lot like Corporal Klinger from here...

And even the Park Service got involved - the judges' area was in the plaza area right outside. I probably missed quite a few good floats by wandering off, but I am glad I got to see some of it, at least.

Tennis is taking over my life

2011-07-28T16:20:00.000-05:00

Why am I telling you this? Because it means you probably won't get a new blog until next week. I am out of pictures that I have finagled off the external hard drive that does not like my computer, and I won't have time to get any more until Sunday or Monday. Because tennis is taking over my weekend. I have a match tonight, after fencing, and then I am in a tournament that means I will be playing Friday night and Saturday, at the least. If I am somehow incredibly lucky, I could be playing on Sunday (not likely).

So, here is an old picture of Kirby to tide you over.

He doesn't play tennis, and probably doesn't approve of me playing tennis, since it keeps me from sitting in his room feeding him papaya bits.

Independence Hall

2011-07-27T15:30:00.000-05:00

Why is it that the historical buildings I want to visit are always under construction? Last year, when we were in Belgium, one cathedral in Brugge and the Palace of Justice in Brussels were both scaffolded. Anyway, that is what I could see of the outside of Independence Hall. I had to imagine the actual tower. At least the inside wasn't under renovation.

To visit the Hall and associated buildings, you have to get a ticket, which is free, that lets you in at a specific time for a tour. Our guide warned us all at the beginning that he was taking melatonin in preparation for a vacation, and that he might fall asleep mid presentation. He didn't, but I did think that was an odd way to start. He also had a bee in his bonnet about John Adams not having a statue in Philadelphia, even though he was instrumental in the Revolution and the creation of the Constitution. Being a (very) distant relative of John Adams, I too think he deserves a statue. But he wasn't particularly flashy or vocal, and somehow, I think he might not like a statue. Oh well.

I couldn't help but think this room would have been mighty uncomfortable in the depths of winter and the sweltering heat of summer, just like it is shown to be in the wonderful (ha ha) musical 1776. There were big fireplaces at the front, as you can see, but a big open space in the back (where we were standing) and plenty of gusts would have been blowing around in the winter. And there was no air conditioning or electric ceiling fans to stir the air in the summer. Phew.

While it was interesting to see the place where the Declaration of Independence was signed, I was a little disappointed that we couldn't visit any other part of the building. The upper floors were off limits, so it was only the two main rooms and the entryway. I guess since nothing of great national import was done upstairs, they prefer to keep potential tourist damage to a minimum. Bummer.

Right next door to Independence Hall, and open without a ticket (and also empty), was a building that was used for various purposes, including the state supreme court. I actually kind of liked it better.

Those are some big jugs. I wonder what was in them. Doubt it was just water.

Anyway, those were the only historical buildings I actually went into. I could have paid to go into Betsy Ross's house, or any other number of buildings related to George Washington or Benjamin Franklin, but I only had so much time, money, and interest. Besides, I had to go watch the Gay Pride Parade.

Liberty Bell, er State House Bell!

2011-07-25T15:37:00.000-05:00

Just a short post today, so I can continue to milk the pictures from Philadelphia for a while longer. I have been too busy, and the weather has been too hot, to take anything decent since then! Anyway - while in Philadelphia, I made sure to take time to see some of the historic sites, the ones you hear about in American History class in 5th grade. The best part about most of them, is that they are owned and operated by the National Park Service, so they are free (well, apart from paying taxes, but you don't have to pay an extra fee to see things at least). To see the Liberty Bell, all you have to do is stand in line, and that line is actually for the security screening - much like a screening at a major league baseball park. You just show that you aren't carrying anything explosive or corrosive, and off you go.

To get to the Liberty Bell, you could wind your way through a nice set of exhibits about the history of the bell, which points out that the bell itself was not originally called the Liberty Bell, but rather the State House Bell. The name Liberty Bell was, according to the Park Service info sheet (and the exhibits), given to it by a group of abolitionists in the 1830s. Interesting. I did not know that. To be honest, I only gave most of the exhibits a cursory glance (I'm not in 5th grade history any longer, and I knew there wouldn't be a quiz - so sue me, I learn to the test sometimes!), because mostly I just wanted to see the bell.

And there it is. It is actually larger than I thought it would be - the opposite reaction than I have to most historical objects and buildings. Yes, the thing weighs 2000 pounds, and it looks like it. The bell itself (why didn't I try for an up-the-skirt picture of it?!) is quite thick, and that beam that holds it is massive. I didn't take a picture of the cracked side, apparently. Oh well. This is how it looked during the Revolutionary War period. Apart from the tourists, that is.

Next up, Independence Hall and the Old City Hall.

Let's get medieval

2011-07-21T14:26:00.000-05:00

There were so many cool things at the Philadelphia Art Museum and I know I only saw a fraction of them in my whirlwind trip. For one thing, there were three other locations with even more stuff, including the Rodin Museum, and the Perelman Building, which appears to have all sorts of modern collections, including costumes and clothes.

One of the coolest things I did get to see were all the little rooms that have been brought from actual castles and manors and temples and so on and reconstructed at the museum. This is the ceiling of a small chapel-like room (can't find the specific room in the collection database, but others are there). The rooms that are complete with furnishing give you a real sense of what it was like to live in a medieval manor house, or a German monastery.

I like this painting of St. Catherine of Alexandria for several reasons. First, she is reading a book; second, she is standing in front of Bruges, and it has a special place in my heart since we were there last year; and third, she is totally standing on the pagan emperor who killed her. Awesome. I didn't spend too much time in the medieval/Renaissance painting rooms because a lot of it was similar to all the art we saw last year in Europe. If I had been there longer I probably would have spent more time there. But I wanted to make sure I got to see the other cool stuff:

Like 14th and 15th century swords. While I was in Philadelphia (and for a month afterwards) I was listening to A Distant Mirror, Barbara Tuchman's history of 14th century France, and was excited to see things that came from that time and place. I also saw later dueling-type swords, but these were true war swords.

And where there are swords, there must be shields and armor. I decided not to try your patience with the (many) pictures of horse armor I took (not sure what I was thinking at the time other than "horsies, in armor!"), but this shield is amazing. All that detail, all done by hand without any modern tools or computer renderings or anything. So. Much. Detail.

If you ever have a chance to go to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, do it. It definitely belongs in the same class as the Metropolitan Museum in NYC, and the Smithsonian, and the British Museum.

Next time, I will turn to the sights of Colonial America at Constitution Hall.

Poppies and Puppies

2011-07-20T15:37:00.000-05:00

Here are some more pictures from my visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I love Rookwood Pottery, and I love poppies, so I would love to have this vase. My picture doesn't really do the colors justice. This one from the museum is much better.

Yes, another poppy vase. One thing I really like about Arts & Crafts era vases and lamps is that so much of the work was done by women artisans. Like this one. They didn't really get famous, like their male counterparts, but they were there, and they are documented, some of them at least, and they did lovely work.

This little guy was just about my favorite item in the entire museum. And he is really old - 3rd century CE - just goes to show that even the ancient Chinese liked their cute dogs.

And the Japanese, in the 18th century.

So did the Koreans. This adorable little puppy (who looks an awful lot like puppy Miikka) is from the 16th century.

Tomorrow - Medieval European art and artifacts.

Philadelphia Museum of Art

2011-07-19T14:33:00.001-05:00

See the folks getting their wedding pictures done?

So, back to Philadelphia and the art museum. Not only does it have cool statues around it, it also has art inside - imagine that! And even better, they allow photography, as long as you don't use a flash. So what follows are some of my pictures from inside the museum (well, after this one and the next one which are both outside). I had less than an hour and a half to see the museum, and the steep price of admission (which I was happy to pay to support art etc, just not more than once in a week) meant that I couldn't come back later to see what I had missed. And thus began a whirlwind journey through some of the treasures of the world.

OK, so we are still outside for this one. But isn't it cool? They have painted the frieze so that it looks much like architectural historians speculate Greek and Roman temples really would have looked like - not the plain white marble we are used to seeing. (I know, this escapes the column, and as much as I want to give you the best picture possible, I am not good at coloring outside the lines, so this makes me anxious. But art needs to be seen, so I am going to ignore that feeling. I think I need a wider column...)

~~I honestly have no idea who this is, since I didn't bother to take a picture of the identification~~. This is Mary Anne Heide Norris by Thomas Scully. I thought she had an interesting expression on her face. Look at the shine of the silk of her dress and the furriness of her stole. I am always blown away by the abilities of painters - there are very good reasons I stick to photography.

[Library-related Diversion for a moment: The Philadelphia Museum of Art has a really good example of a digital library for its art. You can search by artist, classification, origin of art etc. There are no limiters, so I couldn't search for Mary Anne by "painting NOT landscape," but that is sort of a minor quibble that probably doesn't come up for most scholars, since they would probably at least know the painter they are looking for. And they do have a social tagging feature, which allows casual visitors like me to help put more metadata on pictures. For instance, this painting did not come up under the social tag for "portrait," but when I found the painting through a more laborious search, I was then able to add "woman" and "portrait" to its list of social tags. Pretty cool. There are many examples of digital libraries that don't work all that well, so it is nice to find one that works. In all, I have been extremely impressed with the ease of searching for the art in Philadelphia and the information available. Okay, back to the art].

OK, coloring outside the lines for this one too.

This is Thomas Moran's Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. The play of light on the rocks is just right, what you actually do see when you are there. I have seen pictures of this painting in books before, and copies at art galleries in Sedona, so it was a little thrill to see the original in person.

I cannot find this armoire in the collection catalog, but I believe it is Pennsylvania German, since that was the group of furniture it was with. Sorry about the glare on the window in front. Anyway, there was quite a lot of interesting furniture, and apparently there was a lot more in one of the other branches of the museum.

This jug made me laugh. I did manage to take a picture of the information about it (same as the info at the link), because I knew I would want to share it with you. And I have a friend who is a potter who used to live in Asheville, NC.

Next time - vases and ancient puppies - even 2000 years ago, people loved their puppy pictures!

Now That Harry is Done, Read Something Else

2011-07-15T09:06:00.000-05:00

OK people - I like Harry Potter, as I think I demonstrated yesterday, but I am getting a little tired of all the stories on the radio and interwebs about how this is the end of childhood, the end of an era, oh noes whatever will we do?! The books aren't going to suddenly disappear from the earth, neither are the movies (I mean, it isn't like they are the instructions for how to get to the moon, which NASA got rid of at some point - true story, heard it from a college astronomy professor who had worked for NASA). Ypu can go back and re-read and re-watch them. Use them as your madeleine to remember childhood, instead of mourning its passing. And move on, find something else to read and love. Need some help in that department? Good thing I am a voracious, omnivorous bibliovore, and a librarian to boot. I have suggestions aplenty.

The Abhorson Trilogy (maybe one day to be more) by Garth Nix: It has magic (more clearly thought out and explained than the magic of HP), a couple of great female protagonists - both of whom have to grow into their roles as saviors much like HP, a talking magic cat (who is way more than he seems) and a talking magic dog (also way more than she seems), conflicts between good and evil with several very nasty big bads, and the juxtaposition of a a world where magic exists and one where it does not. One of my all-time favorite series.
The Keys to the Kingdom series, also by Garth Nix: Written for a somewhat younger audience than the Abhorson Trilogy - Arthur in this series is 12, while Sabriel is 17 or 18 when Sabriel starts - the Keys to the Kingdom involve a sort of neo-Victorian alternate realm where certain kinds of magic work, but where things are falling apart and the decay is starting to affect Earth, or the Secondary Realm as it is called, and only Arthur can put things right. The problem? The more he manages to fix, the less human he will become.
The Pellinore Series by Alison Croggon: Magic is done by Bards who use their gifts to help the people and lands, but Bards are being attacked by the Nameless One. The main protagonist, Maerad, a slave at the beginning of the first book, is rescue by Cadvan, learns she is a Bard and finds that she must solve the riddle of the Tree-Song in order to save the world. Hilarity ensues (well, tribulations and adventures anyway). Another series with a well-thought out magic system, a complete backstory and history, and an invented language. In some ways, a female version of the Lord of the Rings, but if you don't like Tolkein, don't let that keep you from this series.
The Mistborn Series by Brandon Sanderson: I have only read the first book in this series so far, but it was excellent. Benjamin has read everything by Sanderson (apart from the Wheel of Time books that he is finishing as Robert Jordan's appointed successor) and says that the rest of this series is awesome, especially if you like kick-ass women protagonists with magic powers.

Had enough? Need more ideas? Sign up for Goodreads and take a look at my various bookshelves. I have 179 books on the Sci-Fi/Fantasy shelf alone that you might enjoy. I haven't even mentioned any of the steampunk series I love by Gail Carriger and Cherie Priest (her Southern Gothic series is pretty darn good too, as is her Cheshire Red Reports), or Shanna Swendson's Enchanted Inc series.

What the heck, my Harry Potter Memories

2011-07-14T12:36:00.000-05:00

It seems that everyone else is doing it, so I might as well join in. Since this weekend is the premier of the final Harry Potter movie, the interwebs are aflame with stories of how Harry Potter and friends changed lives. There is a touching letter sent by a fan to J.K. Rowling; there are stories about how Hermione should be the real star of the series; there are stories about how today's young adults grew up alongside Harry and what it means now that both book series and movie series are finished.

My Harry memories start around the time I went to Scotland in 1999 to study for a semester at St.Andrews University. The books were gaining buzz, and I, being perverse, decided that I was not interested in them, since everyone else seemed to thing they were the bees knees. Then, I reasoned, if I have to read them, at least I will wait until I read them properly - in the British editions, not the stupid American ones where they have to change all the slang and descriptions of jumpers to sweaters. I finally read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (and yes, that is how is should be - sorcerer's stone my foot!) in a few hours while staying at the house of one of my flat mates for a weekend. I was staying in her little sister's room, and that sister had the first three books there. As soon as I finished the first one, I also devoured the second one - I am pretty sure I ignored the family and stayed up way too late. I didn't have time to read the third before it was time to leave, but I did managed to stop at a bookshop in Edinburgh on my way back to St. Andrews and buy all three. I read Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban on the bus ride back, in the dark and rain, crammed in like a sardine.

I was back at Whitman when Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire came out. Since I had the first three in the British edition, and can't stand it when things don't match, I ordered my copy from Amazon.co.uk, which meant I had to wait a few extra days before I could read it. Benjamin took that copy on fire with him that summer, and when I got it back, the edges were stained with ash.

I don't have any particular memories about books 5 and 6, apart from again ordering them from Britain, to make sure my set was complete.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. By this point, Benjamin and I had agreed to read the final book together, as we do many other books. This one was painful though, in so many ways. I do most of the reading aloud, and there were certainly times I choked up. At some point, maybe half way, we were desperate to reach the end, so we sat down on the bed and started reading. Every time we reached a chapter end, we couldn't stop. We ended up reading for 5 hours straight. By the end, I could hardly talk, my voice was going, and we were both crying. I haven't gone back to read it since then, but I am sure I will still cry whenever I do.

I never camped out or attended a release party, nor did I ever dress up as a character. And I have no feelings one way or the other about the movies, although I will certainly go see the final one, eventually. They are fun to see, if a little uninspired. But that is pretty much par for the course for me - I am not touched by pictures on a screen and special effects - it is the power of words and my own imagination working together that hit the hardest. And that, for me, is the greatness of Harry Potter - no, the story isn't completely original (I mean, orphan boy struggles against great odds, where have you heard that before - everywhere), there are gaps in the world-building that leave a perfectionist like me irritated - but as a whole, it sucks you in. There are so many stories of kids who hated to read becoming readers just because of Harry Potter. And that is magic.

More Statues of Philadelphia

2011-07-13T15:51:00.000-05:00

On my first day in Philadelphia (I was there for the Special Library Association Annual Conference) I headed over to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. You know, the one where Rocky runs up the steps? Since visitors are allowed to take pictures inside the museum, I have some of those to share too, but today we are sticking with statues.

Where was I? Oh yes, Rocky. If you look closely, you can see where his knees have been rubbed shiny. When I first got to him, there was a gaggle of tourists having their picture taken with him. I was a little disappointed that it was in a little alcove-like space at the bottom of the steps, and not at the top. But I guess this is a better place - no steps for careless tourists to fall down while taking a picture.

Another statue of Washington - he's everywhere

This statue in front of the museum is also a fountain, and is another tribute to George Washington (other photos and info here). I like this one, mainly because of the fun and pretty darn accurate animals all around the base.

Like these moose. Rather casual pose there, for such a large and majestic animal - one hoof dangling over the side - but still well done.

Or this bear. I love the splayed back leg on him - just like Miikka.

This one, just a little to the side of Rocky, is The Lion Fighter. And can I just say how grateful I am for the Philadelphia Public Art website that I have been linking to? It has 756 separate works of public art in Philadelphia cataloged, with metadata!

Around the side and to the back of the museum are other statues. Like this very shiny one of Joan of Arc. I don't remember if there was a sign explaining just why there is a statue of Joan of Arc outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but I am sure there was a good reason. I'm sort of surprised no-one has tried to steal her and strip off the gold to sell. Maybe they have and she is just too big.

This one is a memorial to the Armenian Genocide. You can read the accompanying inscription here.

And so we don't leave on too down a note, here is Puma.

Philadelphia Statues

2011-07-11T11:44:00.000-05:00

On the campus of the University of Pennsylvania

OK, here we are - I got the Philadelphia trip pictures off of the camera, and even managed to get a bunch edited down. Since there were a lot of them, and they sort of fall into themes, that is how I will be presenting them to you. If you don't like it, and were expecting a chronological tour of my time in Philly, too bad. (Actually, if you do want such a thing, I'd be willing to show them to you after dinner some time, the way my father used to show slides to dinner guests when I was a kid. I promise not to get mad if you fall asleep, the way both my grandmothers used to do.)

One thing Philadelphia has a lot of is statues. They are everywhere - downtown, on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania (the above statue actually has multiple copies - one downtown and one on the campus), in the historic district, and even above the entrance to a parking lot, like this one.

This guy was one of a pair in the Chinatown area, guarding a rather nondescript parking lot. Well, nondescript apart from the twin dragons. Our parking lots in Little Rock are rather less distinguished.

There are, of course, many statues of famous people, like Benjamin Franklin (who lived a good portion of his life there, and did lots of civic-minded things for the city):

Looking down on the students from a high pedestal

Both of these statues are on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, although I am sure there were others that I missed in the city itself. I rather like Benjamin Franklin (and it has nothing to do with the fact that my husband's grandfather is Benjamin Franklin Rider). He was intelligent, civic-minded, curious, and must have had a wicked sense of humor.

Franklin with pigeon (also a statue)

I'm sort of sorry I was alone when I took this picture, because it would have been neat to have a picture of me sitting with him (no, not in his lap! What kind of person do you take me for?)

And of course, what would a trip to Philadelphia, cradle of the Declaration of Independence et al, be without a statue of George Washington? Here he is outside of Independence Hall. The guide on that tour (you'll have to wait until I get to the "historical sightseeing" theme for those pictures) pointed out that there are no statues of John Adams (my distant relative) anywhere in Philadelphia, and sounded a little bitter about that. Hmm.

Tomorrow - more statues, and Rocky.

In which I beg pardon

2011-07-07T07:59:00.000-05:00

Yes, I still have not done anything with my Philadelphia pictures, and I have not taken any other pictures in July. I have not done anything particularly interesting either. Tonight I do start a beginning fencing class - taught in part by Benjamin. Maybe I will have a funny story about my incompetence to relate tomorrow.

Photo by Candace Donovan

Since I don't have any of my own pictures to post, I will post one of my mother's. She has recently acquired a new camera and is having fun playing with it - apparently my photographic tendencies come from both parents.

An Easy Weekend Recipe

2011-07-05T10:17:00.000-05:00

Would you believe I was actually too busy over the three-day weekend to do anything with the pictures from my camera? I did get them off the camera, but did not have time to go through them or do any editing. Alas. But I did get the shower scrubbed and made baba ganoush with eggplants from our garden.

I also made up a very Italianate sort of lunch on Sunday that was so good I had it again on Monday. This lovely event came about because we had no left-overs available, although there was quite a bit of food around. Rather than going to the store to buy frozen pizza (my first inclination for any empty pantry problem), I decided to be creative. Don't know what came over me! Anyway, I decided to combine cous cous with cherry tomatoes from the farmer's market, some sun-dried tomato pesto, a can of tuna, and some Parmesan cheese. After the cous cous cooked, I just threw everything together, added a little bit of salt and pepper, and voila! It was tasty, and thanks to the protein from the tuna, filling. Monday we had the same situation - plenty of food but no leftovers - so I made the dish again, only this time I used sardines in olive oil instead of tuna. Benjamin, with a bit of surprise in his voice, declared it quite palatable (not in those words, but close enough). Needless to say, I was quite proud of myself. I am, if I say so myself, a good cook, but I tend to rely on recipes for most of my dishes. To throw something together and have it not only not be disgusting but actually taste good was a nice little boost.

AWOL Again

2011-06-30T10:24:00.000-05:00

Yes, I have been AWOL again this week. Far from being lazy, this summer has been going full-throttle since May (which, I realize, is technically not summer, but since it was hot and Benjamin was out of school, it counts in my book) and I have just not had much time to download and organize pictures. And what would reports of my various activities be without pictures? Blah, that's what.

That said, one thing I have been busy doing is attending the Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre's production of Othello. I went on Saturday with a couple of friends, then again last night with Benjamin. The actors et al. did a marvelous job - Iago was villainous and thoroughly evil, the sets perfect, and the final act especially was heartbreaking and shattering. It was so good that I have no desire to see Othello again any time soon, for it would be too wrenching. They have one more performance tonight, then it is back to As You Like It (which we will be seeing this weekend), and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Since this week is a long weekend, I should have plenty of time to process photos, so hopefully I will be back blogging at a more reasonable rate soon.

Above the Buffalo

2011-06-27T11:29:00.001-05:00

Since the telling of this story has already gone on much longer than the trip itself, I am going to wrap up my review of our camping trip today. After a night in the woods, it was time to head back up to the car. And up, and up. The entire trail back was uphill to some degree or another.

Part-way up the climb we took a short side trip down Goat Trail trail to get a view of the Buffalo from above. The guide book was full of warnings about how dangerous the trail was, and how any slip would be fatal, and how the author wouldn't and couldn't take any responsibility for any accidents, but how cool the view was and how it was definitely worth the trip.

We decided to take the risk, but to be careful and stay away from any edges (not really much of a problem, since Benjamin gets vertigo in high places, even more so when it is me near the edge). The trail was rather narrow, and there were a couple of places where the going could be considered tricky, but not too dangerous.

And the view was worth the detour. Yes, the river is down there, somewhere. There were hawks gliding around below me, but of course I didn't have my telephoto lens, and they wouldn't hover for me!

There - told you the river was down there. This is upstream from where we camped, and at 10 AM, there were already plenty of floaters visible. Supposedly, from one of the view points, a settler's cabin was visible across the river. I am always amazed at the places people homesteaded in Arkansas - now those places are almost inaccessible, only seen by hikers. Once though, people lived on hillsides, and tried to earn a living and keep themselves fed in places where the soil is thin and rocky, the trees shade out the ground, and neighbors far away.

After a short contemplative interlude, it was back to the main trail and up and out. It was a lovely hike, although my dad would have hated it - he has never liked hiking up, which is why we never went camping in the mountains when I was a kid.

Red Neck (literally) Traffic Jam

2011-06-22T13:51:00.000-05:00

So, to re-cap where we are - we have hiked out into the wilderness, about 5 miles, to get some solitude while exploring the Buffalo River and environs. After dropping our packs at a campsite and eating a snack, Benjamin and I head off down the trail (or I guess I should say up, since the trail is decidedly uphill) towards Hemmed-In Hollow, and the area that the guide book described thusly: "This is what wilderness was meant to be. No sign or sound of man. Only the hush of the water cascading over the falls, and the cry of a red-tailed hawk above."

Obviously, Tim Ernst was not describing the falls area on Memorial Day weekend. This is the view leading up to the falls. An actual traffic jam, 5 miles into the wilderness. Full of red necks. When I say red necks, I don't mean the Jeff Foxworthy "You might be a redneck ..." kind; I mean the kind that come from floating down a river shirtless with a cooler of beer but no sunblock. I'll take my scraped-up knee over that kind of sunburn, thank you very much.

When the line finally crawled up to the falls, this was the scene. Just add in the sounds of screaming and the smell of cigarettes and it is like you are there. Sheesh! Of course, most of these people did not come in the hard way, like us. Oh no - they all floated in, beer can in hand (yes, I already mentioned the beer, but I am not kidding, everyone except the children seemed to have beer with them), took a short little stroll in their flip-flops and river shoes, and then had plenty of energy to spare for exuberance. And the falls were pretty cool, when you could look up and ignore the people.

Anyway, I suppose we should have been expecting something like the traffic, since it was Memorial Day, and in another section of the guide, Ernst says that "On most spring weekends, you'll see a lot of paddles here! In fact, it can get down right crowded." The thing is, except for Pinnacle Mountain and Cedar Falls (both short hikes to spectacular views), we have never yet been on a trail in Arkansas where we saw more than a handful of people at any time. Certainly never on a long trail like this one.

Hiking the Buffalo

2011-06-21T13:22:00.000-05:00

So, at long last, here are the pictures from our backpacking trip along the Buffalo River over Memorial Day Weekend. The Buffalo River is a National River, which is a sort of National Park. Most of the parks in Arkansas are state parks. In this case, there aren't too many differences, since I think hunting is allowed in the Buffalo area, where it wouldn't be in Yellowstone. Anyway, the trail-head that we wanted was about a 3 hour drive from Maumelle north to the town of Ponca.

The trail was mostly downhill for the hike to the river, great news for the inbound hike, not so good for the next day's climb out. But that is another post. The weather was on hot, but not so hot as it has been since then, and we started at a higher elevation, so it was cooler at the top. It was probably the last weekend until October or at least late September that isn't too hot to go hiking. I suppose we could go hiking when it is 95 out, but really, why would we? I can roast quite easily in my own backyard, thank you very much.

Anyway, I didn't take the camera out of my pack until we reached Granny Henderson's Cabin - one of the reasons we chose this particular hike. A friend who is extremely knowledgeable about hiking in Arkansas told us that this was one of his favorite hikes, and that we definitely had to stop at the cabin. Granny Henderson lived in this cabin until the mid-1970s, when the National Park Service basically forced her out so they could create the national park area. The story, as told in a newspaper article and a homemade sign nailed to the cabin, is pretty disgraceful - forcing an old woman out of the only home she knew for 70 years. Not one of the government's better moments, I am afraid. But the cabin was pretty cool, and the area was lovely. I can see why she would have wanted to stay, despite the lack of running water, telephone, electricity, and transportation.

From the cabin, it wasn't far to the river. Our ultimate destination was Hemmed-In Hollow Falls, but camping is forbidden close to the falls, and we wanted to drop our packs somewhere before we headed to the falls.

We found a perfect campsite just up a little hill, off a side trail, ditched our packs, and headed towards Hemmed-In Hollow.

This picture must be from the next morning, because during the afternoon, the river was jammed with canoes and children and bros with beer. It looked like a fun outing, and we decided that next summer we definitely have to go ourselves.

From the river, the trail to the hollow goes back up into the trees and uphill for a mile or so. I managed to slip off a log while we were crossing a creek, bang up my knee and fill a boot with water - but I didn't drop the (expensive, new) camera in the water, so it was OK. Later, I got my foot stuck in a rock and banged an elbow, but again, didn't break the camera. I think it is just my father's genes coming out - he was always scraping himself on rocks and logs when we went hiking, partially because he was so excited to get a better angle for a picture, or because there was something interesting to see.

Tomorrow : Hemmed Hollow, or the Traffic Jam in the Woods.

Things I don't like ...

2011-06-20T15:25:00.001-05:00

Shopping for shorts. I don't really like shorts, but it has been over 90 almost every day in June, so shorts are only practical some days, at least at home. I had a couple of pairs that I got several years ago, when I was thinner, and then I had less muscle on my legs. They don't fit any longer, so I needed to buy a pair of shorts that are not athletic shorts. I have a couple pairs of those, but I use them for going to the gym and playing tennis, which means they are sweaty and stinky and not fit for wearing around the house. So, I forced myself to go shopping for shorts this weekend. Ugh. The sizes are all weird, the lengths are all weird, and the designs are all weird. What is up with the little button flap on the sides, as if you are actually rolling up longer pants?

It doesn't seem that difficult really, to design a basic pair of shorts. But somehow, it must be, because there was a definite lack of plain, decent shorts. Sigh.

I found a pair, but as I complained to Benjamin "They don't even have my sizes, and I am not really a difficult size, so I am forced to see how fat they make me look, before I can even look at how ugly they are." Not a great day for loving my tree.

Friday Garden

2011-06-17T10:07:00.000-05:00

I am running way behind on my pictures. Here are a couple of pictures of our garden, from the first part of May. The peas (tall plants in front of Benjamin) are finished now, and the broccoli is about finished. The collards (middle of the first box) are a lot larger, and so are the tomatoes and squash (back box).

Next week I will give you the long-delayed pictures of our hiking trip, and maybe even pictures from my trip to Philadelphia.

This week I like: Reading Terminal Market

2011-06-14T08:01:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the lack of posts this week. I am in Philadelphia for the Special Libraries Conference, and I forgot to bring the pictures from our Memorial Day weekend hiking trip. Oops. I will have those for Thursday. In the meantime, I have fallen in love, not surprisingly, with something food-related. There is a covered/indoor market here in Philadelphia a lot like Pike Street in Seattle. It is the Reading Terminal Market (pronounced Red-ing, not reed-ing). It is in the area where the Reading train terminal used to be, and it has so much good looking food. Yesterday, I had lunch at a gyro stand. This morning, I had a Nutella-strawberry crepe. I have bought some apples for snacking, and scones for nibbling in my room. If we lived in Philadelphia, this would surely become a regular Saturday morning destination.

5K Recap

2011-06-08T13:59:00.000-05:00

The 5K was this weekend. I didn't meet my own personal goal of not walking at all, but I finished. I am pretty sure the main reason I had to walk was the temperature/humidity combination: it was 85 with 60 or 70% humidity at 8 AM. Since I did most of my practice running in the gym, with at least a little AC, that was just too much. Benjamin ran the entire way though.

I still don't think that I am a real runner - it isn't fun yet, not really. It is work, a challenge, but I don't lose myself in the running. But I certainly do want to RUN an entire 5K some day, when it is cooler. So I will keep running some of the time for my morning cardio workout, and I will try to go longer and faster. Maybe being a runner isn't something you just become - you have to slip into it, until one day, I will look up and say - Hey, I'm a runner!

A Visit to Falling Sky Farm

2011-06-07T15:58:00.001-05:00

Moveable Chicken Houses

I am almost a month behind on taking pictures off the camera - I though digital cameras were supposed to remove the lag between the taking and the viewing. I guess that only works if you actually take time to get them off, just like film. Anyway, last month, between storms and tornadoes and before the hot weather, we attended a farm day held at Falling Sky Farm, one of the farms we get food from at our farmer's market. Cody and Andrea are the driving force behind our online market/CSA, and are really motivated and interested in providing local, humanely grown eggs, chickens, pork and beef. They hold a farm tour day semi-annually, but we have never been able to go before.

The day was gorgeous, with a breeze, but not too much, and it was sunny, but not too hot. The farm is about 100 miles north of Conway, just at the edges of the larger hills and mountains up that direction.

Chickens, trying to decide if we are friendly

Andrea and Cody raise laying hens, meat chickens, grass-fed beef, and acorn-fed pigs (well, not exclusively, but they do get to root around under oak trees every day). I only have pictures of the laying hens - I forgot to charge my camera battery, and it died right after the first stop on the tour.

Yup, not a threat. Let's investigate.

They move the cows and chickens daily, so that the grass isn't overgrazed, and the chickens get a chance to scratch through the manure, which helps spread it around and eliminates bugs.

Charge!

The tour was great, although I only have these few photos. We walked around to the cows and the pigs, then had a delicious potluck with the other visitors. I love that we are able to go see the farm where our food comes from, and see that the animals are happy and healthy and that the land is healthy as well. I also love that we are able to support small, local farmers, since they should be the backbone of our food economy.

Visit their website. If you are interested in learning more about the local food movement, slow food, etc, there are many, many resources available on-line and at your local library. Read Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, go to a farmers market. Start a garden.

A REALLY good reason not to diet

2011-06-02T09:14:00.000-05:00

Here is an article that gives me all the proof/evidence/ammunition I need to never want to diet or restrict my caloric intake just to lose weight. From Experience Life Magazine, a columnist tells the story of what happened to a group of volunteers who went on starvation diets during WWII to help doctors learn how to treat the many soldiers and civilians who were starving in Europe. Short version? They went crazy. Literally. Several had to be put into psych wards, one cut off his fingers with an axe. All on a diet of 1500 calories, which is actually above what some of the popular diets out there recommend. So, don't do it. Don't restrict yourself in the hopes that you will be thin. Aim for health, eat enough food to keep you sane, because this world already has enough problems without a lot of starving, psychotic people in it.

A couple of AWESOME links

2011-05-27T15:58:00.000-05:00

I was reading Already Pretty (which is in itself a pretty darn good blog, even if you aren't all that into fashion), and must pass along some of the awesome links in today's post.

The power of saying "no" to all the voices that tell you to conform, especially with regards to body acceptance.

"It’s not simply a matter of fat people having a rough time of it, even though they do, and even though it is wrong that fat people are often harassed, humiliated, and ostracized, and that this ill treatment is socially encouraged. Our cultural expectations of normative bodies, and our stringent beauty standards, and our compulsory and universalizing ideas about health—these forces hurt everyone, no matter their size, no matter if they are slender, or average, or very very fat." (emphasis mine). from Two Whole Cakes

Another blogger (who happens to also be a librarian) writes about how she has come to love her thighs, even though they don't fit the "norm." Yes! As someone with rugby player thighs (she calls hers peasant thighs) who is learning to love them for all they allow me to do, I love hearing someone else say the things I have been thinking.

As I said earlier this week, the journey never ends, and it is so good to read other people going through the same things I am.

Weather Update

2011-05-26T12:27:00.000-05:00

Just a quick update for all my non-Arkansas friends. Yes, we have had a lot of bad weather in the last month. There was a tornado that touched down about 5 miles from our house, and eventually did destroy most of a town northeast of us. There was record rainfall and flooding - even in Maumelle. But we are on a hill, so although our backyard was rather soggy, and the garden got thrashed, we are fine. The flooding in Eastern Arkansas is a long ways from us. We appear to be moving into hot and muggy weather, which is par for the course around here in May and June (and July and August and September). The ticks are evident, as are mosquitoes, snakes, and spiders.

So on we go, towards summer. The garden is growing, whenever it isn't getting beaten down by rain, or blown around by wind gusts. Miikka continues to search for new tunnels to China in our backyard.

If you feel motivated to donate money for disaster relief, check out the Red Cross, or Habitat for Humanity, or Heifer International (their teaching farm here in Arkansas was heavily damaged during one of April's storms).

Mental Relapse

2011-05-24T16:22:00.000-05:00

So, I have talked recently about how I am changing my view of myself, trying not to think about weight, instead focusing on health and fitness, and how I am going to run a 5K. But it isn't a permanent shift to a better attitude. It probably never will be. Lately, I have been, for various reasons, feeling fat, feeling dumpy, feeling like I need to eat sugar and goodies (which really doesn't help the fat thing either). It is a constant struggle to remind myself to love my tree, to remember that my self worth does not depend on my jeans size, that a diet won't make me happy, that I am not in competition with anyone else - that what I can do is between me and my yoga mat (as my new yoga teacher is fond of saying in class), or between me and my treadmill. But it is a struggle worth having, because the alternative is to be unhappy forever, to hate myself, to hide away behind some false facade that is not me.

So, I begin again. As one of the meditation teachers I have been reading says, (and I am paraphrasing) Begin again, even if you have to do it over and over again. That is the practice. Breathe in, breathe out, begin again.

Indeed.

2011-05-19T15:59:00.002-05:00

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

2011 TBR Pile Challenge update

2011-05-18T12:58:00.000-05:00

5 months into the year, and I have finished 5 books from my To Be Read Pile Challenge List. The one that I thought might derail me, PrairyErth, has now been finished - it took me almost exactly 3 months (622 pages of fairly dense natural history etc.), and I have started listening to another long one, A Distant Mirror, as an audiobook in the car. Now the one that will be a challenge is Madam Bovary. But I am sure I can manage it...

Here is a link to my "review" of PrairyErth on Goodreads.

As an incidental note, I am also 47 books into my Goodreads challenge to read 110 books in 2011. That number will be climbing steeply in a couple of weeks, because I have a slew of graphic novels on hold at the library. Yes, I count them as books. They have pages, I read them, I get them at the library.

The only problem with these challenges is that they are supposed to help me whittle away at all my "to read" lists, but those lists are not getting any smaller. For every book I read, I probably add 2 or 3 to the list. So many books, so little time...

A Snake in the Grass, er, Leaves

2011-05-17T10:07:00.000-05:00

Last Wednesday, during dinner, Miikka could be heard barking in the garden. There is nothing unusual about that, but I noticed that the tone of the bark had changed, less "This is my yard, here I am," to "Timmy fell down a well," so I went to investigate. He'd found a turtle or tortoise a few days earlier, and I didn't want him to harass another one. This time, however, it was not a turtle. It was a snake. A snake eating its own dinner.

Yup, that's a snake, not a turtle.

I wasn't sure what species it was, except that I knew it wasn't a copperhead (yes, we have those here. Yes, I have seen one, but not in our yard.) Even if it wasn't venomous, I still didn't want Miikka to bother the snake, so he had to come inside (after I took a few pictures).

When I came back to look at the snake after our dinner was finished, he/she too had finished dinner. I was amazed at the tiny head, and the fact that it had managed to get the entire bird into its seemingly small mouth. Just goes to show what an unhingable jaw can do for you, I guess.

The bird is just a small lump in its midsection now.

After another look at it, I was able to use the Internet to identify it as a speckled kingsnake - not venomous, and not particularly fierce. In fact, they are really good snakes to have around, because they eat other, more dangerous, snakes, as well as rodents. The speckles were bright and shiny, and for a snake, it was quite pretty. That said, I don't really want a snake to take up permanent residence in my back yard, since it would likely drive Miikka nuts. Luckily, by the time we returned from our evening walk, the snake had moved on to find somewhere more comfortable to digest. It is welcome to visit from time to time, as long as it has somewhere else to sleep.

Blogger ate my post

2011-05-13T12:51:00.001-05:00

This is a temporary post - Blogger ate my last post, and while it should be restored soon, I don't want to post anything else until it comes back. Sorry!

2011-05-12T12:34:00.000-05:00

After our pizza dinner at Delancy, we took a walk around the Ballard Locks. We entered through a lovely botanical garden, where all the flowers were blooming.

I was trying to show the glow given by the setting sun, but somehow, it is never as magical once captured by the camera's lens.

The Locks connect the saltwater Puget Sound with the freshwater of the Ship Canal and from there Lake Washington. Above is one of the large chambers that fills with boats and water, raising or lowering, depending on which direction you are going. When we first got out of the car, my nose started twitching, sniffing deeply as I tried to pull in the smell of salt water. I miss that smell. It isn't as if I smelled it every day when I lived in the Northwest, since Bellevue is pretty far from the saltwater of the region, but the smell reminds me of ferry rides, and trips to the beach, and a sense of freedom that comes from standing on the edge of a continent, with nothing to see but the ocean. There is no saltwater in Arkansas, and I sometimes think I can feel the weight of being so landlocked.

One of the interesting features of the Locks is the fish ladder, built when the Locks and Dam blocked the natural pathway for salmon spawning. The salmon of the Northwest are anadromous, meaning they live in saltwater for most of their lives, but return to freshwater to spawn (and then die, but that is another story). So, they had to come up with a way to get the fish from the saltwater to the freshwater.

Yes, it actually is like a set of stairs. I don't have pictures from inside the viewing room of the fish ladder, because it is just too dark, and besides, it wasn't the right time of year for fish.

This is the dam that prevents the lakes from spilling out into the Sound, and keeps the Sound from saltifying the lakes. The white tubes are where the smelt (baby fish) go shooting back into the Sound. Kind of like a neat water slide.

As we left, we noticed this Canada Goose sitting on a nest, in the middle of the garden. I hope she was left undisturbed.

Skunk Cabbage

2011-05-09T12:01:00.000-05:00

I promised you skunk cabbage, and now I give you skunk cabbage. "It is a lovely plant, if rather phallic in design," I hear you say, "why is it called skunk cabbage?" Well, folks, to be brutally honest, it stinks. A lot, if the conditions are right.

When in bloom, it produces a stink not at all unlike an actual skunk. According to the Wikipedia entry on skunk cabbage (Lysichiton americanus, to differentiate it from the Eastern Skunk cabbage, which is not at all closely related), this stink is to attract the particular pollinators - flies and beetles - that pollinate the plants.

According to Wikipedia, bears have been known to use skunk cabbage as a laxative (I am so curious about the scientists who figured that out. How do you discover such things? How do you get interested in studying the bowel movements of bears?). But apparently, they are not really that good for humans to eat. Oh darn.

No sign of the flowers in this picture, but you can see just how many of them there are at the nature trail. And that is just one small glade.

Luckily, the flowers were in bloom, but not that pungent the day Dad and I were shooting these pictures. Otherwise, I wouldn't have stuck around long enough to get more than one picture!

Be your tree

2011-05-09T10:15:00.001-05:00

On Saturday night, we watched a really good documentary, American the Beautiful, about the business of beauty in America, the problems that the way that business operates pose for American girls and women. If you want to see some scummy guys explain why they only want to date skinny blonds, and watch a lovely girl enter the modeling industry and come out the other side thinking she is fat at worthless, and find out why they all think that way, watch this documentary. This clip is my favorite moment of the whole movie. It is Eve Ensler, author of the Vagina Monologues, relating a story about a woman in Africa explain why we should all love our bodies, no matter what they look like.

Bellefield Nature Trail

2011-05-06T11:37:00.000-05:00

The Bellefield Nature Trail is a great place to go to take pictures, pick blueberries, walk, splash in streams, and get muddy (especially if you are of the canine variety). When I visited last month, the leaves were just starting to emerge on the trees and vines, and the skunk cabbage was in full bloom. In the summer the paths are dappled and shaded, a good place to go to hide your tender white Pacific Northwesterner skin from the harsh sun (yes, Northwesterners are a little like moles when the sun comes out).

The area that is now park used to be filled with farms (warning, the background on that page is atrocious), during the first half of the 20th century. At some point, the city started buying up the parcels of land, and now it is a large park, just south of downtown Bellevue. To camera right in the above picture is still a working blueberry farm, owned by the city. You can go and pay to pick your own blueberries there. This is not where I pick blueberries, but I am not about to tell you about that patch - it would be like an angler giving up his favorite fishing hole. Anyway, that water you see is part of the slough. Before the level of Lake Washington went down (after the Ship Canal was cut) it was all under water. Now, it is a slough, a swampy, marshy area with some running water and lots of mud. (Didn't know you would be getting a history and geology lesson, did you?!)

This part of the park also links up to a larger trail system that goes into Seattle and around other parts of the Eastside. We usually just do the shorter loop, but that's OK, especially when you get to take pictures of such great shadows, and of course, skunk cabbage.

Stay tuned - next week I will finally get to this mysterious plant.

Today I Love

2011-05-05T09:27:00.000-05:00

Picture from Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Red-winged blackbirds.* I remember seeing and hearing them on walks with my parents (often at the same Bellefields park that I will have pictures of later). I didn't hear or see them for years while I was living in Texas - too much in the city I guess - but they are abundant at the two local lake parks where Miikka and I walk. I love hearing them as I walk in the early morning.

*Take a look at the awesome Cornell Lab of Ornithology website. It has a searchable database with pictures, habitat information, conservation status, and most awesome - sounds. If you follow that link, you can hear just what I hear in the mornings on my walks.

Donovan Family Obsessions, or my visit to Bellevue, Part One

2011-05-04T11:59:00.000-05:00

My dad in a standard photography pose.

I took a quick trip home to Bellevue over the Easter weekend, and got tons of good pictures. My family is fairly moderate, apart from a few obsessions, but whenever I get home to visit, we indulge those obsessions. This trip was no exception - we hit most of them: photography, good food, and books.

Obsession #1: Photography

The Saturday I arrived was their first nice day of the year, the kind of day that locals hope outsiders never see (because then they would never leave), the kind of day that compels you to go outside and do something, anything. So, we did. Dad and I took our cameras to the Bellefield Nature Trail, handily located about a mile and a half from home. It was always a great place to take the dog on a weekend afternoon, and there were certainly plenty of people there with the same idea. I took a boatload of pictures of the park, and the skunk cabbage (enough of those to make one entire blog post), but you are going to have to wait for the photography part of the trip, because this post is about obsession #2, good food.

Brandon (Mr. Orangette, owner) at the oven.

One of the first things I said to my parents when I made my plane reservations was "We have to go to dinner at Delancy." They were happy to oblige. I have been waiting impatiently for my chance to go, ever since the restaurant first opened, since the last time I was in Bellevue, it was Christmas-time, and the restaurant was closed for a short vacation. Wah!.

I forgot to take a picture before I started eating. Too good to wait...

It is a wood-fired pizza restaurant owned and run by Molly Wizenberg, the blogger behind Orangette, and her husband (who she met because he read her blog - seriously, go read her book about it). On the blog, Molly's descriptions of setting up the restaurant, building the oven, and then of the food that they served, was enough to make me drool all over my keyboard. Anyway, if there was any chance at all that I could get to Delancy this time, I was going to take it.

Mom's white pizza - a cheesy, crispy bit of deliciousness.

We went that first night, and was it worth the wait! Not a fast-food place, the pizza took a while to come out of the oven, mainly because the restaurant was packed. People, it opens at 5, we were there at 5:10, and it was already full. We barely squeezed in. By the time we left, there was a line out on the sidewalk waiting for our seats. The salad was perfect to share with my mom - lettuce, a green goddess dressing, bacon... yum...

Dad's pepperoni and sausage pizza, with homemade sausage.

But the pizza was the star of the night, of course. Crispy from the wood-fired oven, topped with the best tasting ingredients. We got three, although that was being a little greedy, just because we wanted to taste them all. And we had dessert, a rhubarb poundcake with mascarpone that was tangy and sweet and oh so good. Oops, starting to drool there a bit. Anyway, it was delicious, and if you live in the general Seattle/Ballard area, you should go. If possible, go often. The menu changes regularly with the seasons (and it has changed since I was there), so you need to go a lot to get all the goodness they have to offer. Wish I could join you!

Back to "normal"

2011-05-02T14:33:00.001-05:00

After a weekend of traveling, a week of playing sleep catch-up, and a weekend of tennis and rain storms, it is back to what passes for normal in my life. It is still raining - we had as much as ~~5 inches~~ 12 inches in the last few days! - so Miikka may not get a walk this afternoon, but I did make it to the gym for the first time in over a week. I had to drag myself out of bed, for even though I posted last week about being a defiant athlete and wanting to train for a 5K race, it is sometimes still hard to do what I love. 5 AM comes mighty quickly when it is cold and rainy.

At the gym, I started actually training for the 5K, by following a Couch to 5k plan that has been adjusted for the treadmill. Since I only have 5 weeks before the race, I started at week 5. And you know what? It was easy, too easy probably. It only really had me running for 15 minutes, which is less than I was running with my intervals a couple of weeks ago, and although they were in 5 minute increments, I was able to keep up. Actually, I had to tack on an extra 10 minutes at the end, because I had only gone 2 miles, and I am used to going at least 3 when I am on the treadmill. I guess that is OK, and it means I am in better shape than I thought (I tend not to be good at judging my own fitness - what a surprise).

And that is my main criticism of this plan (obviously a well-thought one at that, after one whole session!): I am not sure how they expect you to go 5K in 30 minutes at this stage. Am I not supposed to be going 5K at this stage of the plan? I guess not. I mean, to do that in the time they have you running, you have to run about a 10 minute mile for 30 minutes. I can do that for some of the time, although I don't know if I can yet do that for the whole 30 minutes. I doubt that anyone who is truly coming from couch potato-ness would be able to run that fast, even after 9 weeks of training. They have the running segments ramp up pretty quickly, which again, I don't think someone who is truly un-fit would be able to do.

Hey, it's not perfect, but at least I have a plan to give me some structure. If I have to do more time on the treadmill to get the full distance I am used to, then so be it. That can't really be a bad thing, can it?

Cacti

2011-04-29T09:54:00.000-05:00

Here are the last pictures from my early April trip to Arizona. I had fun using some of the SLR features of my new camera, especially the one where I can do manual focusing. When I am taking close-up pictures, a auto-focus often chooses something other than what I want as the main object to focus on.

With the manual focus and the interchangeable lenses of the DSLR, it feels just like taking pictures with a "regular" camera, except that I am not wasting film if I take 15 pictures of the same thing as I try different settings.

I missed that flexibility with our other digital cameras. That, and the viewfinder. I don't mind the viewing screen, but I prefer to use it as a post-picture check to make sure I got what I was trying for. Somehow, it never felt quite right not to have the camera up to my eye while I was shooting.

But I do love not wasting film. Since, I like my father, take way too many pictures at every opportunity, it is really nice not to have to pay to develop all that film just to get a small batch of good photos.