Ancora Imparo

Poetry Friday

2012-02-10T10:09:00.000-06:00

I feel a bit like I'm cheating doing another Poetry Friday. I've been bad about posting recently and poems are generally easy. But then I thought...hey it's my blog. And I want to post a poem.

I love Neil Gaiman. I love his stories, I love his blog, and I love his poetry. I've only found one thing he's written that I didn't like and considering how much he's written that's pretty incredible. This poem makes me giggle so of course it makes me ridiculously happy.

The Day the Saucers Came
by Neil Gaiman

That day, the saucers landed. Hundreds of them, golden,
silent, coming down from the sky like great snowflakes,
and the people of Earth stood and stared as they descended,
waiting, dry-mouthed to find what waited inside for us
and none of us knowing if we would be here tomorrow,
but you didn't notice it because

That day, the day the saucers came, by some coincidence,
was the day that the graves gave up their dead
and the zombies pushed up through soft earth
or erupted, shambling and dull-eyed, unstoppable,
came towards us, the living, and we screamed and ran,
but you did not notice this because

On the saucer day, which was the zombie day, it was
Ragnarok also, and the television screens showed us
a ship built of dead-men's nails, a serpent, a wolf,
all bigger than the mind could hold, and the cameraman could
not get far enough away, and then the Gods came out
but you did not see them coming because

On the saucer-zombie-battling gods day the floodgates broke
and each of us was engulfed by genies and sprites
offering us wishes and wonders and eternities
and charm and cleverness and true brave hearts and pots of gold
while giants feefofummed across the land, and killer bees,
but you had no idea of any of this because

That day, the saucer day the zombie day
the Ragnarok and fairies day, the day the great winds came
and snows, and the cities turned to crystal, the day
all plants died, plastics dissolved, the day the
computers turned, the screens telling us we would obey, the day
angels, drunk and muddled, stumbled from the bars,
and all the bells of London were sounded, the day
animals spoke to us in Assyrian, the Yeti day,
the fluttering capes and arrival of the Time Machine day,
you didn't notice any of this because

you were sitting in your room, not doing anything
not even reading, not really, just
looking at your telephone,
wondering if I was going to call.

Scatterbrained

2012-02-08T20:36:00.000-06:00

Did you miss me? Good, because I've been missing me a lot recently. I'm not really sure what I am lately. It's certainly not at the writing table. At least not blog writing. I have so many things I'd like to tell you about but I seriously do not have the energy tonight. I just spent the last two hours looking for my wallet, canceling my credit cards (after realizing it was lost), and trying to remember everything that was in there. I'm sure that I'm not even remembering half of the things that were there.

I keep losing books and keys. I habitually lose my coffee. It's actually an odd day when I don't turn to Jeff and ask, "Do you know where I left my coffee?" I always find it but I live in fear of the day I find a month old cup with some serious mold growth. Nothing grows mold quite as fast as coffee. So I've been scatterbrained. I may never know where the wallet went to. I lost it from my office to the car. That's a distance of less then 30 yards. I just hope that someone honest, decent, and wonderful finds it (the way I know most people are). We'll see what tomorrow brings. In the meantime I'm going to make myself a pot of decaf, and curl up in a ball and read. It's the only safe thing to do.

No Instruction Manual

2012-02-03T09:17:00.000-06:00

A couple years ago I had an epiphany. It should have been something that had occurred to me years ago but I can be slow sometimes. I realized that no one gets an instruction manual when they are born. No one has things all work out. We are all playing it by ear. I'll repeat, we are all playing it by ear. That simple phrase stopped me in my tracks. It struck me like the proverbial thunderbolt. I remember stopping on the street and gasping at the simpleness and brilliance of the idea. And this was at 33 (see told you I was slow).

Through most of my life I've felt inept at things. Other people seem so much better at navigating life then I do. I seem to struggle to do everyday things more than most other people. I've always wanted to be smooth and perfect and it always seemed like I was clumsy and inept while other people weren't. And I used to feel bad about that, until this epiphany. This simple statement that we are all playing it by ear, made me realize that I'm not alone. That no one is working through the designated plan. That no one starts life, knowing instinctively how to give a business speech, or how to paint like Van Gogh. And more importantly, no one knows where their life is going. It's being made up on a daily basis. That was stunning to me.

And it opened the door to allow me to be imperfect. I no longer had to be smooth and polished, I could be fumbling and untaught. I could learn at my own pace. I could make mistakes left and right. I'm not inept, I'm learning. Now when I beat myself up for mistakes, I remember that they are all mistakes other people have made. We all start out with the same lack of knowledge. We all start out with the same idea that we should have a direction or a plan in life. And none of us do. We are all playing it by ear. And that is liberating.

Eric Barclay

2012-02-01T12:59:00.001-06:00

It's been a while since I posted about an artist whose work I enjoy. I have a number of art and artist blogs that I follow so I'm always finding new and inventive work. Some more inventive than others.

Eric Barclay is a Texas based artist with a fun retro feel and some great use of bright colors. His print work is sweet and whimsical with a focus on animals and children. You can't help but smile when looking at it. I started following Eric's blog a while ago and am completely in love with most of his print work.

But it's his sculpture that I adore. Barclay takes cans, bottles, old light bulbs, and containers of all sorts and paints them to creates characters. The adorable little skunk above was once a Coke can. The two below, recurring characters for Barclay, are made from creamer containers. And to make me love them even more the penguin is Mr. Shackleton (based on Ernest Shackleton the Antarctic explorer I'm fascinated with) and the walrus is Mr. Hudson (based on Henry Hudson the fabled New York explorer).

Eric has done work for a number of different publications and companies. His blog and his website are filled with tons of examples of his great work. I love art that uses unique media and empty bottles, wood, gears, and lightbulbs are certainly unique. This last image, the lion below, was made from an old French's mustard container. I can only post a couple of his examples but check out the rest of his stuff on his website. It is guaranteed to make you smile.

Stopping By the Woods...

2012-01-29T21:42:00.000-06:00

...On a not so snowy evening.

I went out for a walk this afternoon. I've never had a regular exercise routine but I love to walk. It's something that I feel I could do for hours and still never get tired. I used to walk for an hour and still be just as refreshed as when I started. Most of the time I would walk fast, feeling my breath and heartbeat speed up. Nowdays I often go with a set of binoculars and a camera and most of the time I just stroll. I have a path not far from the house that is "far from the maddening crowd" and I headed that way. The moment you get away from the road the car noise drops to a minimum. It is peace incarnate.

I had a decent walk but my ankle still bothers me so I turned around after a half hour and headed for home. The route home is uphill and I was panting a little by the time I reached the top. I'm a bit out of shape lately. After I walked under the underpass, stopping to listen to the mourning doves that sound like monsters when echoed around the bridge, I headed up the last hill for home. But I didn't go in. Instead I headed straight for the creek. I sat down on the ravine edge, pulled my coat around me, and sat. It was relatively quiet. I could hear the birds and a distant squirrel chewing. Other than the occasional car (we live off a pretty busy street) all I could hear was the rushing of water and the wildlife.

It was the closest thing I've found to heaven. The air and ground were cold but after I got used to it, the temperature was just part of the moment. I sat and watched the woods get darker and darker. I could feel the moment when the temperature dropped as the sun went down. In one moment I went from snug to seeing my breath. But I still didn't go in. I just sat there, not really thinking, not really worrying, just sitting. It was meditation. It was bliss.

Why I Love Having a Cat

2012-01-28T20:40:00.000-06:00

Just a random video of my kitty attempting to distract me from blogging. I love having her around. I know that there are about a billion cat videos out there. But this is different. This is my cat. ;-)

Poetry Friday

2012-01-27T10:07:00.000-06:00

It's Friday and we are sitting on the edge of a snow storm. Nothing major but after the winter we've had, even the slightest snow feels like a betrayal. I have no reason to complain though. It's been the best January ever. Warm and dry. I've been in heaven.

Even with the nice weather I've been hibernating. I go home and make tea and curl up on the sofa to read. I have a stack of books at home from the library that I'm planning to get through this weekend. I can't seem to leave the library without at least a dozen. I'm reading at a frantic rate. It's been a blissful winter so far.

And today I stumbled on a poem that makes me smile. I figured I would share. It's right up my alley for obvious reasons.

My First Memory (of Librarians)
by Nikki Giovanni

This is my first memory:
A big room with heavy wooden tables that sat on a creaky wood floor
A line of green shades--banker's lightes--down the center
Heavy oak chairs that were too low or maybe I was simply too short
For me to sit in and read
So my first book was always big

In the foyer up four steps a semi-circle desk presided
To the left side the card catalogue
On the right newspapers draped over what looked like a quilt rack
Magazines face out from the wall

The welcoming smile of my librarian
The anticipation in my heart
All those books--another world--just waiting
At my fingertips.

Eye Can Juggle

2012-01-25T09:50:00.001-06:00

I know I posted this up on Facebook already but I figured I would share it here as well. I just finished my newest knitting project, a set of juggling balls. More specifically a set of juggling eyeballs. I'm pretty excited about them. We have a juggling convention in February up in the cities and I'm excited to show them off there.

I decided to make one of each color although you could knit all three the same if you'd like. I modified a Ravelry pattern to make them and then stuffed them with some small round pasta that I keep around the house. They aren't perfect (particularly not the blue one) but I'm excited to juggle with them.

I'll plan to post the pattern later tonight in case anyone wants to make a set. They are far easier than I expected.

Groupings

2012-01-23T16:27:00.001-06:00

Jeff and I were recently in Iowa City and as I got out of the car at the gas station I was startled by the sound of birds. Lots of birds! Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" number of birds. The trees right next to the gas station were filled with hundreds and hundreds of starlings. I stood and listened to them for a while but a thought kept bothering me. I had just learned what a group of starlings was called. They have a special name, not just flock. It bothered me all the way home.

We have lots of specialized words for groups. Almost everyone knows that a group of fish is a school. Or a group of lions is a pride. But not as many know that a group of starlings is a murmuration. Or that a group of owls is a parliament. Luckily I have a handy reference guide, that my sweet little sister gave me. An Exaltation of Larks by James Lipton (yes, that James Lipton) is filled with group names. A leap of leopards, a pod of whales, a host of angels. Some are more common than others. Others are far stranger.

The moment I got home from our trip I picked up my book and flipped through until I found the starlings. The book has no index so it's more about browsing than just finding. It is organized from most common to ones created by Mr. Lipton himself. The groupings are interspersed with pictures. My sister had seen it in a used book store and had bought it knowing my love of words and trivia. It is a joy to look through if you like words and wordplay. It's a gift that I've come to appreciate more and more.

Here are just a few more examples of interesting grouping names:
A Murder of Crows (one of my favorite grouping names)
A Siege of Herons
A Singular of Boars
A Charm of Finches
A Tiding of Magpies
A Clowder of Cats
And of course An Exaltation of Larks

By the way, if you've never seen starlings in their flocks, you need to see this. Starlings (as much as they are disliked) have some of the greatest flying displays ever.

Tom Kundig

2012-01-21T18:19:00.000-06:00

Three weeks or so ago, I saw an article in the Wall Street Journal that caught my eye. The cover of the Personal Journal had the image below. I was instantly captivated. I'm a fan of architecture of all sorts but lately I've noticed that I'm becoming more and more of a modern architecture fan. There is something about the glass and metal that draws me. Perhaps it is the sparseness of the places. But I am particularly a fan of the mixing of modern architecture with the natural world. And this house (The Pierre) designed by architect Tom Kundig does that beautifully.

Kundig works for Olsen Kundig Architect firm in Seattle Washington. This sod-topped private residence is located on San Juan Islands, WA. It is a beautiful setting and the house blends in perfectly. So much of the house is worked into the rocks.

After finding this house I went looking for more of Kundig's work. And I found the room below. This is The Brain, a work studio created for a Seattle-based filmmaker. This is not the house, just the studio. The lights are suspended on pulleys so they can be raised and lowered to a desired light environment. With the glass walls and the bookcases, I am infatuated with this studio. I can't imagine a more perfect place to create.

I really enjoy Kundig's simple lines and use of natural materials. Below is the Delta Shelter, a cabin in Washington that is available for rental. If I had the money, I'd be the next on the list.

And last there is the Chicken Point Cabin in Northern Idaho. This one is also available for rental. With a wall and a view like that, sign me up.

Here's Looking at You

2012-01-19T20:14:00.000-06:00

So I have to share my scary story for the new year. I went to the eye doctor on Friday. Not the optometrist that I've been seeing to have my prescription changed, the "I think there might be an issue" ophthalmologist. I haven't been to my ophthalmologist in probably 10 years or so. My eyes had been good, only some minor prescription changes and I figured I was doing fine. Then Christmas rolled around.

Jeff and I spent Christmas Eve with my parents, having dinner and just visiting. As we sat around the living room I decided that it was the perfect night to build a fire (they have a great woodburner that I love). So I wandered out into the dark backyard to get some wood. I found the woodpiles without too much trouble although it was dark. As I was bending over gathering the twigs, suddenly I saw a flash of light. A bright round flash of light. Like a circle in my field of vision. My eyes were open. I closed them and saw the same round glowing circle.

Now I know what flashing lights in the eye mean. They mean a potential for a retinal tear. My mother had issues with flashers. My aunt had issues with flashers. Both had surgery to correct the issue. So a flashing light, no matter what shape is serious. This flash of light caught my breath. I was shaken. I went inside and pretended that nothing had happened though. I waited. And then I didn't say anything the next day. But each time I was in a dark place I would see the ring. Finally, right after the new year I was freaked out enough to make an appointment. On Friday I went in and had a complete work-up. Full dilation, full exam. He even did some specialized tests. Nothing. Absolutely nothing wrong. I can relax.

For those of you who know me, you know how scary this was for me. For the rest of you, I'll explain. I was born with a defect. A stray artery (called the hyaloid artery) that was supposed to disappear when I was born, didn't disappear. Instead it stretched and ripped a hole in the back of my eye, right at my retina. I have a retinal detachment, in a relatively bad spot. The tear took with it my central vision. I have good peripheral but no central vision at all. What that means is that I'm legally blind in that eye. The ring I was seeing was in my other eye (the good eye). If that one had detached I wouldn't be typing this. I wouldn't be able to read it. I would be legally blind. Not completely blind but enough to change my life forever, in a bad way. I would have to learn braille. I wouldn't be able to drive. I wouldn't be able to do my job.

And that scared me. I thought about how hard it would be to not be able to just pick up any book I want. I thought about how hard it would be to not see what I was writing. I thought about how hard it would be to get around without being able to drive. As I type this I close my good eye and see how well it would go. The red line under my misspelling doesn't even show up in my vision. Easy writing would be a thing of the past. All that said I know that there are people out there who are completely blind and they lead normal happy otherwise healthy lives. I know that I'm blessed with this one eye, that has done double duty since I was born. I know that my story came out good and I'm healthy. I still see the ring but I'm not as worried. But for a moment I was, and because of it, I treasure the sight that I have all the more.

Finding Books

2012-01-17T19:18:00.000-06:00

This....

is a bookstore. That magnificent place sells books. I originally thought it was a library or an auction house. But no, that's a bookstore. That, more specifically is the Lello Bookstore in Porto, Portugal.

This...

is also a bookstore. When I saw this I was sure that it was not. I've seen libraries that look similar. And have never seen any place as common as a bookstore that looked that grand. But then I realized my fallacy. Libraries aren't necessarily grand (I've seen some pretty plain ones) and bookstores aren't necessarily boring (I've seen some fun ones). So why are these bookstores so surprising for me.

I spent part of an afternoon looking at Google Images of bookstores. Try it sometime. There are some pretty incredible ones. And some pretty fun ones. Like this one in Mexico City (this is the Polanco branch of El Pendulo bookstore).

I scrolled through image after image savoring all the different types of bookstores. I clicked on a photo and found this linked list of Most Interesting Bookstores in the World as part of my search. And that's where I found it. My favorite bookstore. Shakespeare and Company in Paris is listed as one of the most photographed bookstores in the world. I can understand why. That is my quintessential bookstore image now. Nothing else will ever live up. Of course I'm not giving up. I'll keep trying to find something more perfect. Isn't that what bibliophilia is all about?

[Writers note: For those interested, Shakespeare and Company is (and has been) one of the foremost centers of all things literature in Paris. In December the long time owner of the store passed away. I read his obituary without ever having seen the bookstore itself. I'm even more saddened by his death now.]

Inside of Shakespeare and Company

Happy Martin Luther King Jr Day

2012-01-16T10:44:00.001-06:00

Today I'm letting the great man speak for me. He does it so much more eloquently than I can.

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy. The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige, and even his life for the welfare of others."
Martin Luther King Jr-- Strength to Love

"If you can't fly then run, if you can't run than walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward."

"Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way."

"If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.'"

And lastly one of my favorite quotes. A breathtakingly simple bit of optimism. "Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree."

Ticket to Ride

2012-01-14T19:19:00.000-06:00

Apparently my "Art of Disappearing" post was spot on. I put the poem up and then promptly disappear. I blinked and missed the week. Or completely ignored it. Today I took ten minutes away from my book and realized that it's been almost a week since I last posted anything. Which is a bit amazing because I've kept gathering topics on little post-its all week.

But the first thing I have to tell you about is the game that Jeff and I have been addicted to all week. Last Saturday I wasn't feeling great (due to stupidity on my part) and spent most of the day lounging around the house. I napped, I watched TV, and I annoyed Jeff (so not a terrible day ;-) ) After spending most of the day indoors Jeff wanted to know if I would go out with him to the games store. We had a gift card that was apparently burning a hole in his pocket. That sounded great to me.

We browsed the shelves of strategy games like kids in a candy store. I haven't played a ton of the strategy games but I've enjoyed every one I've gotten the chance to play (okay mostly...Primordial Soup just wasn't my thing). It came down to a choice between Shadows Over Camelot (thanks Keith) or Ticket to Ride (thanks Vicky). The only reason we went with Ticket to Ride is that it allowed for two player games. Jeff and I brought the game home, cracked it open and after reading up, played our first game. Then played another. And another. The next night we broke it out again for a couple more games. Last night we took it over to my parent's house to teach them. To say that we're addicted is a bit of an understatement.

Ticket to Ride is a train strategy game. At the beginning of the game you draw routes across the US and Canada that you are supposed to try to complete (New York to El Paso, Montreal to Vancouver, Duluth to Houston, etc). Each of those routes is made up of smaller city connections like Chicago to Omaha or El Paso to Phoenix. To collect a route you need to save the appropriate number and color of train cards and then when you have enough you lay your own colored train cars down to claim the route. Routes between cities can be anywhere from a single car to six cars. For each train car you put down you get points and for each route you complete you get points. And in the end the longest continuous route gets points.

While not as strategic as Agricola or as difficult to win as Pandemic, this game is addictive. With 30 something long routes and numerous ways to make the connections you are constantly planning. Jeff and I enjoyed the game with just two but having four made it a bit more challenging. You can play as aggressive or as defensive as you like. But in the end you come away planning how you could have done things better or marveling at a route that came together at the last minute. My coworker Vicky mentioned it as a fun game. It'd go farther. I'd say it's my current favorite game.

Let Me In

2012-01-09T22:49:00.000-06:00

It's picture day. I haven't bothered to write a post today, although I have tons of things to talk about. And nearly 11 p.m. is not the time for me to start writing. So instead I'm just sharing a picture. This is from the winter zoo trip my sister and I took last year. I love this shot. He seems so intent on getting in, out of the snow. He wouldn't have to worry about that this year.

Big Bang Theory

2012-01-08T18:57:00.001-06:00

A while ago I wrote about my love for geeky men.I'm the one drooling over the guy in glasses playing D&D until all oddhours. Dressing up as a Klingon for a convention is actually a plus rather thana minus. Most geeks I know are passionate about things and that's incrediblyattractive. And so of course I've started watching The Big Bang Theory. Andhave completely lost my mind over the show.

I'mlate to the party as usual. The show already has five seasons under it's beltand I've just started watching. When it first came out, everyone raved. I knewpeople who wouldn't go out on Mondays so they could catch it. It was all therage. So of course I refused to watch. It has only been since the reruns havestarted in syndication that I've become hooked on the show. Okay not hooked,addicted. Obsessed. I watch numerous episodes a night and am still disappointedwhen the programming changes. I've been debating buying whole seasons even if Ihaven't seen half of the episodes (rare for me). It's just so cleverly written.The dialogue sparkles, the retorts are witty, the jokes are funny, and the castis just fantastic. Even the science is good (so good I have to look things up alot).

Andof course I love the boys. Not just because of the rounds of Klingon Boggle orHalo nights. Or because of the way they are passionate about their work. I lovetheir geekiness. Their comic-loving, cosplay-dressing, board-gaming playingselves. I have a mad crush on Leonard although that doesn't surprise me since Ihad a crush on Johnny Galecki when he was on Rosanne years ago. Nothing haschanged there. Except the glasses are a little better and the clothes aredefinitely better. But what startles me is how much I adore Sheldon. He's meantto be irritating. He's meant to be frustrating. And yet I still find his oddidiosyncrasies adorable. And I find his arrogance hot. I'm not sure why.Perhaps that odd mix of arrogance and fragility makes me want to protect andthrottle him at the same time. Either way I know that eventually I'll buy atleast one or two of the seasons. It's too good not to own. And watch over andover. I'm a geek after all.

Poetry Friday

2012-01-06T11:53:00.000-06:00

I disappear sometimes. Like a magician, I make myself invisible to the world outside. I hide at home, in books, and don't return phone calls. All of my sisters do this occasionally. We get used to each others disappearances. The important thing is that we always find our way back. We always reappear.

The Art of Disappearing
by Naomi Shihab Nye

When they say Don't I know you?
say no.

When they invite you to a party
remember what parties are like
before answering.
Someone telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.

If they say We should get together
say why?

It's not that you don't love them anymore.
You're trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished.

When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven't seen in ten years
appears at your door.
don't start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.

Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.

Imperfection

2012-01-04T22:22:00.000-06:00

I've never claimed to be perfect. In fact, I'm not even a perfectionist. Jeff will rip out his knitting over and over and over until he has it perfect. If I find an error in my work I'll go back and fix it if the solution is easy. Otherwise I'm more than happy to just accept that there will be issues with my knitting project. My current mittens (my first pair) have one thumb that is inside out. I still wear them, mostly proudly.

So why is it that when I come to other creative work (writing, drawing, painting) or dieting, I expect myself to be perfect. I sit down to write, put one sentence on the screen, and instantly erase it because the words aren't perfect. I write half a story and then stop because so far it hasn't been the masterpiece I'm looking for. I draw images of small furry animals and then instantly erase them because they aren't perfect re-creations. It's frustrating.

And I'm even worse when it comes to dieting. In November I started writing my food choices down again. I'm trying to stay under an 1800 calorie diet. And most of the time it works well. I'm feeling better, I'm eating better. I've even started walking three to four days a week. And some days I go over calories. And it is a constantly struggle every time it happens not to give up and just eat whatever I want. I have to remind myself to just restart the next day. I'm demanding perfection of myself and that's not fair. No one is perfect. So my first drawings won't be masterpieces, my first drafts will be terrible, and each day I may or may not stay within my calorie limit. The important thing is that I keep trying, imperfections and all. Now if I could only remember that.

Kipling's Mongoose

2012-01-02T19:00:00.001-06:00

I read The Jungle Books at a young age. I was probably ten or so when I discovered Kipling's world of wolves, tigers, snakes, and man-cubs. Of friendly panthers and troublesome villagers. And of course the poetry. It was the poetry that stayed with me the most. Shortly after reading the story of Mowgli, I had memorized the opening poem.

"Now Rann the Kite brings home the night
that Mang the Bat sets free.
The herds are shut in byre and hut
for loosed till dawn are we.
This is the hour of pride and power
of talon and tusk and claw.
Oh hear the call--good hunting all
Who keep the jungle law."

I'm not sure why the poem stuck with me but it did. I enjoy Kipling. I know that his reputation in the last couple decades has slipped. He seems antiquated with his colonial views. But he was a master with words. I was reminded of how good when I stumbled on the animated film of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, a Chuck Jones cartoon that I'd loved as a child. And of course I had read Kipling's story as part of The Jungle Books. I watched the cartoon and then went back to read the story. Like How The Grinch Stole Christmas, Chuck Jones stayed incredibly true to the source material. Most of the dialogue and all of the narration are taken directly from the story. Even the Tailorbird's song is faithfully reproduced. The only thing missing is the opening poem. I had tried to memorize the poem years ago. And when I re-read the story I remembered why. It is wonderful.

For reference Red-Eye is Rikki because of his red eyes before striking. Wrinkle-Skin is Nag, the cobra.

At the hole where he went in
Red-Eye called to Wrinkle-Skin.
Hear what little Red-Eye saith:
'Nag, come up and dance with death!'

Eye to eye and head to head,
(Keep the measure, Nag)
This shall end when one is dead;
(At thy pleasure, Nag.)
Turn for turn and twist for twist--
(Run and hide thee, Nag.)
Hah! The hooded Death has missed!
(Woe betide thee, Nag.)

New Years

2011-12-31T22:51:00.000-06:00

I like transitions. For some reason new years and birthdays fill me with the same type of hope and wonder. I believe that all things are remade. For a couple days I believe in omens. Two years ago I posted about how the moon would be strange that new year. I joked about omens. Now I'm more of a believer. Two days later I broke my ankle, an injury that will continue to impact me for the rest of my life. Tomorrow I'll look for omens that will signal how the new year will go. Today was a beautiful way to end a year.

I had amazing day with the love of my life. Jeff and I relived the old days by waking up and suddenly deciding to go out of town. We used to take spur of the moment trips all the time. The plan was that we would hit the Neal Smith Wildlife Refuge to do some birding and hiking (for me). Then take the back roads to Tanger Outlet Mall and to Iowa City for dinner (for him). Before we could get out towards Neal Smith, Jeff said that we had to take a detour. He wouldn't tell me where. I had to wait to find out. I didn't have long.

Every bird you see here is an eagle (some juvenile, some mature)

There is a lake between Des Moines and Ankeny where we had seen a ton of American Coots a couple summers ago. We headed out there, not for the coots this time, but for eagles. There were hundreds of bald eagles spread throughout the trees around the lake. We had the camera and tripod and were able to take some pictures. I hadn't seen this many bald eagles since our trip out to Rock Island. And the weather was perfect for viewing. If I was looking for an omen of a good year ahead, this was it. That many eagles in one place, and right along the road, was incredible.

After some time (and way too many pictures) we hopped into the car to go out to Neal Smith. We're blessed to have this fantastic refuge so close. Neal Smith has been working for years to bring back the prairie to Iowa, something that had been nearly eradicated by development. Jeff and I hiked the long trail at the refuge because it takes us right down next to the enclosure where the buffalo roam. We were rewarded with a huge herd. And some good position for pictures. With the tripod I could take some nice close-ups.

After Neal Smith, there were back roads drives, tons of shopping (I picked up some books and a really nice new robe). Then we headed to Steak N Shake for dinner. Neither Jeff nor I had eaten today so this hit the spot. Steak N Shake is a guilty pleasure. We don't have one in Des Moines so it seems more like a treat. Then we headed home talking the whole way. It was a fantastic day. And a nice way to end 2011. I had a ugly piece of mail (a rejection letter) but I'm trying not to let that damper the day. Now to see what 2012 has to offer. Hopefully plenty of days like this. Happy New Year all.

Words Create Worlds

2011-12-30T09:55:00.000-06:00

I've mentioned before that I love book art, art based on books. This stunning creation is one of the best examples I've ever seen. This was created as part of an ad series for Anagram Bookshop in Prague, called Words Create Worlds. The image was created by Kaspan Company. I'm not sure how much of this is digitally created and how much of it is paper sculpture. Either way, the idea behind it makes me giddy.

Edit: Shortly after putting this up I thought to link to Anagram Bookshop only to find that it closed at the end of last year. :-(

My Own Starry Night

2011-12-28T16:53:00.001-06:00

I think I've found my writers retreat. I found this picture on Lovely Listing and fell in love with the set up. I imagine that there is a desk across from the sink. I imagine myself spending the evening writing or reading at that desk, with a cup of tea or coffee. And when I got tired, I would climb up the ladder into my own personal starry night. My own private retreat. And everyone needs a room of their own.

Holiday Rush Winding Down

2011-12-27T22:01:00.000-06:00

I hope everyone is having a fantastic holiday season. I hope you have spent time with family, relaxed, eaten too much, played lots, and enjoyed all the little beauties of the season. I'm enjoying that the holiday rush is over and this week is really all about relaxing. I have three more days of work this week but it's been quiet and I'm using the time to do some catch-up. Nothing seems rushed at work. Heck, what am I talking about, no one seems to be at work.

The weather is downright glorious. We are seeing forty degree days. New Years Eve they are predicting mid-fifties. We had a sprinkling of rain yesterday. I can walk outside in a sweatshirt and haven't had to wear my extra-warm wool socks in weeks. Normally this time of year we have a couple inches of snow on the ground and we consider ourselves lucky if the temperatures rise above freezing. I know a ton of people that bemoaned the lack of a white Christmas. I practically danced through the brown grass with my sack of presents on my back. I don't need icicles to feel the holiday spirit.

I generally dislike the rush leading up to the holidays but this week might have to be one of my favorite times of the year. The week between Christmas and New Years is like an extended holiday, even with a bit of work thrown in. The frantic shopping, wrapping, baking, addressing... is done. Now it is time to just sit back and enjoy a slow relaxed week. I've been reading like crazy. I've finished three books on the last couple days. I'm starting my fourth as soon as this is done. I'll stay up a little later than my standard 10:30 bedtime. I might be a tad more tired at work tomorrow but I probably won't have too much to stress me out. Did I mention I love this week? I hope you are having a good one as well.

Repost for Christmas

2011-12-24T09:40:00.000-06:00

I published this on December 24th, 2008. It still sums up my feelings about the holidays. Merry Christmas all! Happy Hanukkah! Sensational Saturnalia! and all the other holidays out there. May you be surrounded by friends, family, love, warmth, and light.

Any of my friends will tell you, because I've said it often myself, that I'm a recovering Catholic. I was raised Catholic, attending Catholic schools, and went to mass every week. (during school twice a week) At 16 I decided I wasn't going to church anymore. I just no longer believed. My mother persuaded me to continue until I was 18 and then she would never mention it again. I went until 18 and she has never said a word about it again. I love her for that.

So Christmas is an odd time for me. I love the festivities and the cheer of Christmas. I'm not huge on the commercial side of it but I do love wrapped gifts. I'm not a shopper but I actually like buying gifts for people. But the religous part of the whole holiday kind of escapes me. Over the years I've paid it less and less attention. I just love getting together with family and spending time.

So this year I'm focusing on what I do love about the season. Strangely it's the same thing that the pagans used to love about this time of year, the lengthening of days. Jeff and I joke that we are phototropic. We love the sun. And particularly love the warmth (Yes I still have no idea why I'm in the midwest in winter. Makes no sense to me). So the sun's return is a reason to celebrate. The ancient pagan religions of early Rome celebrated Saturnalia to honor Saturn, the god of sowing. The holiday was to bring about the return of the sun and the return of agriculture. A statue of Saturn, which was bound throughout the year was untied. It was a seven day festival (Dec 17-23) that included visiting family, gift-giving (particularly gifts of candles), and decorating. In Rome it was a week of sheer debauchery: feasting, drinking, dancing, gifts, and merry-making.

Over the decades the worship of Saturnalia changed to Sol Invictus (meaning Unconquered Sun) which was celebrated on December 25th, which is the first day the lengthening of days can be noticed. Many of the traditions of Saturnalia moved to this new holiday including gift giving, decorating the greenery, and candles. When Christians began to rise in power they wanted to find a day to celebrate Jesus's birth. Since no one knew exactly when that was, the early Christian leaders set it for December 25th. They figured that since people were already celebrating, then it would be simpler to add new (more Christian) traditions in. This worked, slowing ending Saturnalia and Sol Invictus, and bringing about the modern ideas of Christmas.

So this Christmas, as I celebrate with family and friends, it will be the return of the sun (son, hmmm) that I am thinking of. My idea is that we are either moving away from summer or towards it. Tomorrow I celebrate that we are visibly moving towards it. Merry Christmas all. And Happy Saturnalia.

Special Olympics Scarf

2011-12-22T14:03:00.002-06:00

For the last couple years, Jeff and I (along with others in my knitting group) have been making scarves for the Special Olympics. The idea is that the scarves will be handed out to all the athletes at the opening ceremonies of the games and then they can take them home. When the program was conceived in four years ago, the call went out for 5,000 scarves. Knitters all over the US and world responded and donated over 60,000 scarves. A huge effort. The Special Olympics says what colors the scarves will be but the pattern is left up to the knitter. I've seen some really cool things done. One of the girls in the group did a double knit scarf with the alternating colors making blocks. Jeff is making one that will have the date imprinted into the scarf (I will have to post a picture, It's incredible).

And here is my scarf for the year. I like the red and blue far better than last year's blue and turquoise. I knit it lengthwise to create the stripes. I'm a slow knitter so I started it back at Thanksgiving and just finished it now. But I figured I'd share. I hope that it makes some child very happy. I need to do more knitting related charity. The ARL is always looking for knitted things for the animals. Soldiers are always in need of hats and gloves. Babies are always in need of caps. And the poor worldwide are always in need of warm woolen things (like mittens...these are a few of my favorite things). So I'm going to try to be more active in 2012 as a knitter for charity. I don't need everything I make and although I give away most of my knitting as gifts, more of that should be for those less fortunate.

Awesome Opera

2011-12-19T20:48:00.000-06:00

Each year the Austrian town of Bregenz holds Bregenzer Festspiele, an opera festival. There are two stages for the event, an indoor theater that showcases lesser known works and a grand outdoor amphitheater on the lake for popular titles. While I haven't had the chance to see how amazing they performance is, I have had the opportunity to be stunned by the festival. The fantastic thing about Bregenzer Festspiele is the sets. Each year it seems that the festival attempts to outdo itself with another awesome set.

Designs like the one above, used for Tosca, have won international fame by appearing in the James Bond film "Quantum of Solace". I remember being awed by the scene in the film but to find out that this was a real theater was incredible. And then I saw the rest of the sets.

Above is one that was used for A Masked Ball by Verdi.

The above one, for Bizet's Carmen gives an idea of the setting for the stage and the huge audience. I can't imagine how incredible it has to be to see opera outdoors, on the lake.

The last one is from one of my favorite operas, Pucci's La Boheme. It was the first opera I ever saw, decades ago on TV. I loved the starving artist motif and the sad sweet tale of love. It was my introduction to opera and has lead to a lifelong love. I don't see the local operas every year but I try to go at least every other. And now I want to see the ones in Bregenz. I love good set work and it doesn't get any more dramatic or awe inspiring than this. For the history of the festival and the rest of the sets, click here.

Bears and Seals and Deer, Oh My

2011-12-15T22:13:00.000-06:00

I need a cleansing post after my last one on Keystone. As you know I'm an animal lover and I love heartwarming animal stories. So many of the stories we normally hear in the news are bad for animals but these last couple weeks have been fantastic. There have been a ton of sweet wildlife stories in the news recently. From the bear that took a ride on the garbage truck in Vancouver. To the bear found in a New Jersey basement. Both were captured and released without any harm.

There was the recent story of a New Zealand woman who came home to find a baby fur seal napping in her living room. The seal had apparently crawled out of the sea, crossed a busy highway, into the yard, through a cat door, and up some stairs to find the living room. There it had made itself comfortable on one of the sofas for a little nap. The woman was obviously shocked but quickly fell in love with the seal. The NZ Department of Conservation was called and the seal was captured and released into the sea without harm.

But my favorite story from the week was the Alaska Quest Charters captain who found himself in an interested position when four deer swam to his boat in the middle of Taku Inlet and wanted to board. He was in the middle of a chartered cruise but still pulled each of the deer onto the vessel. He turned the boat back to the shore and when he landed the deer got up and wandered off the dock and into the woods. The youngest deer had some issues getting back up after the exhausting swim and was helped off the boat in a wheelbarrow. After a period of time it too ran off into the woods. The event actually happened in October of last year but it has just started making the internet rounds. My sister posted it to Facebook yesterday and I immediately had to steal it. I love those kind of stories. Like the story last year of a firefighter giving a koala water after an Australian blaze, these stories reaffirm my faith in humanity. I hope 2012 is filled with them.

Keystone

2011-12-13T20:48:00.000-06:00

I don't normally get political. But I spent part of the day today listening to a politician talk about why we should build the Keystone Pipeline. They threw out all the classic reasons: jobs, income for companies and people, national security. When asked about why the president would put of the decision on the gigantic pipeline, he said something about how the environmentalists has lobbied him into waiting. Normally I would ignore it. But I hear the same arguments day in and day out. How creating jobs is far more important than worrying about the environment. How income seems to trump wilderness. It's one of the reasons that I hand over a small piece of my soul every day. My job helps bring these projects to life.

I don't believe that money trumps environment. I don't believe that the short term benefit we get now, outweighs the long-term damage we do. Thankfully there are others who feel the same. The Sierra Club posted these pictures from Garth Lenz, an award winning Canadian conservationist and photographer, who took them in Canada right around the area where the tar sand will be mined.

Above is the area where the mining would take place.

Above is the nearby area where tar sand mining is already taking place.

That is my reason. No amount of money is worth that. No local source of oil is worth that. I respect our president for waiting. I'm sad that we're even having the discussion.

Disney History

2011-12-12T15:07:00.001-06:00

When it comes to childhoods, I know that mine was spoiled. I had amazing Christmases with piles of presents. I had a small children's books library that I only had to share with my brothers and sisters. I had two amazing parents who adored us and spent time with us. But when it comes to vacations, we were well past spoiled. We dragged my poor parents to 6 Flags, Busch Gardens, any amusement park we could find really. We spent time out West and down South. But our favorite (or at least mine) was going to Walt Disney World in Florida.

I think I've been to Disney World 6 or 7 times in my lifetime, most of them as part of family trips. One year Jeff and I went by ourselves but a majority of them were during my childhood. Even now I get the urge to go every three years or so. I am a Disney World fanatic. And it doesn't stop with just visiting. I read books about the design and engineering that went into the parks. I read about the history of the Disney Corporation, Disneyland, Disney World, and about Walt Disney himself.

Recently I went through a bag of stuff that my parents had found in their house and packed up for me. Much of it was old school papers and things but I found a couple of books that I thought were fun. I found my Birnbaum's Guide to Disney World for both 1985 and 1993. I found some vacation guides I had picked up while in the parks back on the 1994 trip. It included information about the new MGM Studios. The 1985 book covered the newly opened EPCOT center. I found both of these hilarious. So much has changed for the parks since then. So much has been added or changed.

But my favorite find was an old souvenir map that I had brought home from one of the trips. It shows the resort area, as it was at the time with some of the popular characters of the day. The funny part is that many of the character featured were 80s and 90s TV characters that were big then. The characters from DuckTales, Gummi Bears, TaleSpin, and Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers make an appearance along with Figment, the long defunct (but still beloved) character from Journey into Imagination. Many of the hotels and recreation areas picture above don't exist anymore. But the big change is the expansion. The park has spread and changed. New things have popped up all over. So even though I know the map is outdated I love it. I know the book I bought in 2007 will soon be outdated in the same way. At Disney World things change constantly. But it was nice to find this bit of history to remember the parks of my youth. And look forward to going back.

Best Intentions

2011-12-11T21:21:00.001-06:00

I made a list on Friday of things I was going to get done this weekend. I came home energized that night with the idea that I would be sitting on Sunday with every single task crossed off my list. I had the best intentions.

But not a single task was finished. Not a single chore was done. Heck I didn't even keep up with my online reading or blogs. Instead I've spent my weekend curled up knitting with Jeff or reading. I curled up in the house and read like books were disappearing tomorrow. I read three books this weekend. And I couldn't be happier. It has been a blissful weekend.

On Friday I started The City of Ember, a young adult novel about a town surrounded by darkness. For a long time the town had been supplied by endless storehouses and lit by gigantic floodlights on top of the buildings. But the storehouses are being exhausted and the lights are starting to flicker. Two brave young adults decide that they have to find a way to save their city and find a way to save the light. I put this book on par with The Hunger Games, which is pretty high praise. Those two books have kept me gripped from beginning to end. They both have strong characters and odd plots that I really got into. A good read.

I just finished the third installment of The Penderwick series. I don't normally read series. I generally have rules against doing so. I have boxes and bookcases filled with books waiting to be read. So I tend to avoid reading authors over and over. Particularly when they are talking about the same characters as before. The same way I hate sequels I hate series. But the Penderwicks are different. I read the first book years ago and feel completely in love with the sisters and their family. It is like reading Little Women over and over but with modern characters. And wonderful dialogue and plots. Jeannie Birdsall even throws in some fun Latin phrases to keep me entertained. I am completely in love with these books. They are stand alone books but I just can't pass up a new installment of the sister's adventures.

The last book I'll be doing a full review of later. I'm not ready to talk about it. Needless to say I read it straight through, only stopping for showers and dinner (and even sometimes not the latter). I grew up reading at the table and in the bathroom and stretched out on the floor and before bed. This weekend I've read in the morning and most of the evenings. I've gotten nothing done but I wouldn't trade these days for anything. What a wonderful time.

Poetry Friday

2011-12-09T10:20:00.001-06:00

I've had picture books on the brain a lot recently, for a number of different reasons. Partly because I'm driving out tonight to pick up my favorite picture book of all time (The Library by Sarah Stewart and David Small) that I ordered from my local bookstore. Second because of my children's book blog. The third reason I hope to tell you about soon but I'm trying hard not to write or think about at the moment.

We also had our first real taste of snow yesterday and today I just want to hibernate. I was reminded last night how much I hate winter. When the snow starts to fly I just want to stay indoors, curl up under a blanket, read, sip cocoa, and hibernate. What better way to do that than with a poem about both picture books and winter.

Picture-Books in Winter
by Robert Louis Stevenson

Summer fading, winter comes—
Frosty mornings, tingling thumbs
Window robins, winter rooks,
And the picture story-books.

Water now is turned to stone
Nurse and I can walk upon;
Still we find the flowing brooks
In the picture story-books.

All the pretty things put by,
Wait upon the children's eye,
Sheep and shepherds, trees and crooks,
In the picture story-books.

We may see how all things are,
Seas and cities, near and far,
And the flying fairies' looks,
In the picture story-books.

How am I to sing your praise,
Happy chimney-corner days,
Sitting safe in nursery nooks,
Reading picture story-books?

Oasis Home

2011-12-06T22:20:00.001-06:00

I found this image by Harrison Cady on Illustration Art, a blog I recently subscribed to. I love the image of the house as oasis in the middle of the city. As a hopeful gardener, the jungle surrounding the house is my idea of landscaping. The image is unlike a lot of Cady's work but I had to save it. And now share it.

Book image

2011-12-05T20:41:00.001-06:00

I'm not really feeling like writing this week so instead I'll be posting images I like. That way you still get something new but I can take a bit of a break from writing. I found this one years ago and have had it sitting up on my desktop waiting to be posted. I like most of Cindy Grundsten's work but I love this image.

Talent

2011-12-03T12:19:00.001-06:00

This morning a friend sent me a recording of himself playing and singing one of my favorite songs. It's "Delicate" by Damien Rice. He does a fantastic job. The guitar work is nearly perfect. And surprisingly he has a really great voice (only surprising because I've never heard him sing before). It brought a huge smile to my face and put the song in my head all morning. I've listened to it several times already and marveled at all the hidden talent I didn't know this friend had.

This same morning Jeff showed me the finished fingerless glove that he's been working on for a while now. He finished it late last night and it's a beautiful thing. He designed the pattern, worked in the tiniest softest yarn I could imagine. He managed to repair it when he dropped several critical stitches on his last round. He's recreated it several time, always persistent, and has come away with something that's really wonderful.

With both of these things I'm reminded how incredible a thing it is to share talents. I've smiled all day because of two people who were willing to share their talents with me. I tend to be a private, hidden person. I'm generally guarded with my passions and interests. But today I'm seeing how much joy I could offer by sharing more. By offering my services and talents. And maybe I could bring a smile to someone's face.

Needs list

2011-11-29T21:25:00.001-06:00

I'm in an odd mood. It's not a particularly good one. So I have to post this image that I stole from a friend on facebook. Today it would be "peace". I might have to create one of these and post them up around me. A good reminder. And it brought me a bit of a smile.

Window Clings

2011-11-27T13:50:00.001-06:00

I know that Halloween is long gone. In all honesty I can't really believe that November is almost over. Where did the fall go? I'm not yet ready for Christmas, despite the continual reminders that have been up in every store since the day after Halloween.

I've been saving the picture above to post on the blog. I found it on Lovely Listing the day after Halloween or so and just had to keep it. I don't normally put up window clings or do any major decorating for holidays. But these made me laugh. I would put up these clings. They're so whimsical and cute and odd. All the things I like.

It's images like this that make me think that I need to start a Pinterest account. A place that I could keep all the pictures that I want to save. Then I remember that's what the blog is for.

Home Again, Home Again

2011-11-26T21:04:00.001-06:00

If you're wondering why I've been so quiet it's because I've been gone. Jeff and I left on Wednesday for St. Louis and just got back this evening. When we're out of town we only bring Jeff's computer, so I don't spend a lot of time online. Plus we were somewhat busy. You know...spending time with family. So no posts for most of the week. I was showing my blog to my mother-in-law and realized that I've only posted 100 times this year. Way too few. So I'll try to up the quantity. Quality...well...we'll see.

We drove down on Wednesday to spend the evening with Jeff's brother and his family. I spent a good chunk of the evening playing Hide and Seek with my nephew, and drinking wine and talking with my sister-in-law. It was a wonderful quiet night. The next day we spent most of the day with Jeff's younger brother's family and my in-laws watching the Lions again lose at football and playing with my new nephew. Then at dinnertime we headed over to Jeff's aunt's house for a rather spectacular feast. There were several cousins and their families and plenty of food and laughs. It was a wonderful evening. I was really full and Jeff was stuffed to bursting. We finished the night with more football and a glass of baileys to end the evening.

The next day was much quieter. I never go out for Black Friday and this year I had even less interest. The fact that shops are opening on Thursday now just makes me wonder about our values as a society. I wonder how long it will be before all stores are open on Thanksgiving. So needless to say, I was not heading out shopping on Friday. Instead we hung out with my in-laws for a very nice relaxing afternoon. I knit (I'm working on my scarf for the Special Olympics), helped cook (I have new recipe to share), and was generally lazy. That evening we headed back to the older brother's house for a dinner of appetizers, more wine than I care to admit, and board games. We played Apples to Apples and Discombobulation. I'm pretty sure everyone had a great time. At least there was a lot of laughing.

This morning we headed to a local restaurant for breakfast and then Jeff and I headed out on the road. It rained the whole way through Missouri. A cold continuous rain. But Jeff and I had some great conversations (as we always do in the car) and by the time we were home I was feeling energized. It was a fantastic weekend with family and fun. I only wish I had brought the camera. And now I'm excited to have some time at home. I'm ready to slow down.

Enslaved by Ducks

2011-11-22T13:16:00.001-06:00

Years ago, when I bought my first bird-feeder, Jeff had argued against it. I had been hinting around that I wanted to buy one for quite a while. But each time I brought it up, Jeff would just say no. He didn't have anything particularly against birds or the feeding of them, but he was a little concerned that like my mother I would go a bit overboard in the care and feeding of them. My mother doesn't just feed the birds, she prepares grand buffets for them. But I finally bought my feeder and now Jeff can recognize many of the unique birds that visit our yard. I consider it a success.

Currently I'm happy with my one feeder and its constant visitors. But I could see myself tipping over into overfeeding, overcare. Similar to Bob Tarte's hilarious memoir Enslaved by Ducks, I could easily see animals taking over my life. I'd read Enslaved by Ducks years ago on a whim and had fallen in love with Bob's household. With parrots, doves, rabbits, cats, ducks, turkeys, geese... all running around his house, I found myself laughing at the chaos and energy that I had grown up with. We often had cats, dogs, rabbits, mice, and some poor injured bird in the house. Bob's story takes that to an extreme. These creatures were not just in his life, they had taken over his life.

This past weekend I sat down with Bob's next book Fowl Weather. I was again transported into that wonderful menagerie where animals of any kind find a home. But this is a book that offers equal parts poignancy and humor. Bob mixes stories of his father's death and mother's growing forgetfulness with the antics of his household animals. He talks about his fights with his Muscovy ducks in the same story as the death of his beloved parrot. The story of how one of his parrots bit the bunny's tail off is intermixed with stories of his mother's constantly mislaid/hidden purse, a growing sign of her Alzheimer's. And it's a very personal set of stories. Through all of them, the animals seem to provide a balm for the chaos of Bob's life, even when they contribute to them. The stories show off the craziness of keeping forty animals, some of which hate each other. But it also shows how animals can be more than just pets. They can be saviors. I love to read stories of animals lovers. I can't imagine a more wonderful house for animals to end up at. Read Enslaved by Ducks for humor, read Fowl Weather for compassion.

My Muse is Dead

2011-11-17T20:50:00.001-06:00

Every afternoon, I arrive at my writing desk to find a headless Jane Austen waiting for me. You'd think that would shock me but I'm so used to it now that I just reunite Jane with her head and sit down to write. It's becoming something of a ritual. Reattach head, write. Kind of like a muse.

But I think I should explain. I'm a bit of an Austenite. I've read Pride and Prejudice more times than I can count, although I don't have shrine to Darcy the way some women do. I'm not saying he's not an incredible character, I'm just saying that he's FICTIONAL. But back to Austen. I've read all her books, including the ones that no one else seems to have read. Persuasion is one of my favorite books of all times. I own two copies of Sense and Sensibility. I love this woman's work.

So two Christmases ago, my Dad bought me a Jane Austen potbelly figurine (this was the best picture I could find and I'm too lazy to get the camera tonight). Potbellies are little figures that open up to show a small holder for treasures. It's a really tiny place so those treasures better be tiny. But Jane Austen doesn't hold anything. She just sits on my desk and reminds me how great writing, particularly witty writing, can be. Now Jane opens at the neck to reveal her secret treasure space (wow that sounds bad). Basically her head pops off. And every day the cat jumps up onto the window sill knocking poor Jane's head off. At least I hope that's what happens. It's either that or Jane is attempting to kill herself daily and I'm stopping her.

But every afternoon I walk up the stairs after work, settle into my chair, put the head back on Miss Austen, and pretend to write. I wonder what would happen if I didn't have to reattach her head. Would I not be able to write that day? Would I have to knock off the head to get the creative juices flowing? Does this little ritual make me odd? I'm betting the answer is yes. But ritual it has become. So my poor muse is dead. Every single day.

Creepy Cardinal

2011-11-16T20:58:00.001-06:00

I have my computer set up so that my desktop photo changes every five minutes or so. The computer shuffles through all the pictures in my iPhoto library and displays them. It's actually a lot of fun to find old photos that I haven't seen in quite a while. Last week there was a dark image that popped up on the screen. I minimized and I have to admit that this photo of a cardinal kind of freaked me out. It must be the glowing eyes. Or the fact that it all looks fake. Not sure what it was, but I knew I wanted to share the image. I just find it creepy.

Optimism and Stupidity

2011-11-14T13:54:00.001-06:00

I turned 35 today. Generally birthdays aren't a huge deal for me but for some reason this one is special. Turning 30 wasn't a big deal, but 25 and 29 were really hard. All of the birthdays between here and 30 haven't been anything special. But this birthday has been something different. I'm excited about this birthday. I've noticed that each year seems to get better. I'm at the age I always wanted to be. And now at 35 I really feel like things are going to begin for me. I'm stubbornly optimistic.

My day has been blissfully ordinary and I'm content with that. I had the day off as part of my odd work schedule so I slept in a little late. Jeff wished me Happy Birthday as he left to go to class. I stayed curled up under two blankets taking in the warmth. But I got up shortly after to make it to my dentist appointment. I don't normally schedule appointments like the dentist on my birthday but this was when he could get me in. And it feels like a new beginning. My mouth is clean and fresh and healthy (cavity-free!!) and I'm planning to make this year all about health. I plan to be lighter and healthier by my 36th birthday than I was this year.

I also plan to write more, and actually publish something during this year. As you can see I have high hopes for this year. 35 seems like a turning point, a crossroads if you will. And I'm determined that things will start going the right way. I set up my studio last night so all I have to do is show up each day and start writing. This afternoon as Jeff heads back to class I plan to head upstairs to write. I'm ready to have a little discipline in my life and hopefully the success will follow. Writing and walking will be my focus for the year. Did I mention I'm stupidly optimistic today?

I did though find some additional humility today. Jeff met me over at my favorite noodle place for a birthday lunch. We talked and ate our noodles and had a nice time. As we were leaving I reached in my pocket for my keys. They weren't there. I checked my coat pockets. I checked my purse. I checked everywhere again. No keys. As we got closer to the car I could hear it. It was still running. I had managed to leave my car in the parking lot, running and unlocked while I had lunch. I said a quick silent prayer to the gods of parking lots and thanked them for my car still being there. It could easily have been stolen. I should be kicking myself for my stupidity. Instead, today it just reaffirms my faith in humanity. Optimistic, I tell you. I'm just hoping that this wasn't a senior moment. I'm too young for those.

Harlech House

2011-11-13T15:10:00.001-06:00

These are the gates of a private residence in Dublin, Ireland. If the inside of the house is as fantastic as these gates are, I want a tour. Or let's be honest, I just want to move in. I want to be guarded by dragons. I think the house is currently for sale but I don't have the $2.5 million or so that is the asking price. Still a girl can dream.

Daytripper

2011-11-11T08:05:00.001-06:00

Last week at the library I picked up a graphic novel that had been mentioned as one of the best graphic stories for last year. I'm a huge fan of graphic novels but I tend to focus on the more unique stories. I seek out those novels that touch on unusual topics. Alison Bechdel's Fun Home and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis were two that I've read in the last year and found fascinating. I had read a review of Daytripper by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba and knew I had to pick it up. If the review hadn't caught me, the cover would have (yes I judge books by their covers, also by their titles). Daytripper might be one of the most unique and interesting stories I've read in a while. It's an existential graphic novel with a twist.

Daytripper is all about death. In each chapter, the main character Bras is killed. In a each chapter there is a brief obituary about his life and each section of the book is at a different age. Normally he is killed at a particularly tragic moment, one of the great moments of his life. We see how his death affects others based on where he is in his life. The 11 year old boy receives a very different send-off than the 48 year old man. And through these obituaries (Bras himself is an obituary writer and an author), we get a further peek into his life. In each chapter he loses his life at a particularly poignant moment: after meeting the women of his dreams, traveling on a book tour, after the birth of his first son. But in each story we see the character progress as he accepts life and starts to live more fully.

I noticed that each death, at a later stage of his life, started to impact me more. The first story is all about how he can't write, how he's trying to live up to his very successful author father, how his life is falling apart. Although tragic, his death didn't impact me. Perhaps because they tried to show that Bras wasn't really living. With each story, I felt more and more for the character. His deaths seemed more tragic. A particularly heart-wrenching death was when his son was six and idealized his father. Bras is traveling and the story is of the tender moments between him and his family. And at the end, I cried. Not because he died, but because he lived. The story reminded me of all the living we have to do and we better get to it. I saw how the obituaries changed. In these chapters I got to watch an entire life, and multiple deaths. And each seemed worse. A great character, an inventive way to tell the story, and some incredible emotions. This one has to be one of the best graphic novels I've read. It will find a place on my bookshelf.

Library Longing

2011-11-10T09:10:00.001-06:00

I went to an author's reading last night at one of the newly remodeled local libraries in town. I went early so I could wander at my leisure and check out the new structure of the library. I walked in and instantly started for the nonfiction section. It's become my favorite section lately. And I did what I always do. I wandered down each of the rows touching the spines and seeing what caught my eye. I picked up a couple of books that interested me. I know they have a card catalog on the computer but I prefer a serendipitous way of finding books.

During all of this time, I hardly saw another person. I wandered alone looking at books. And I was struck by how happy I was. I was at peace and contented. I couldn't think of a single place I would rather be or a single thing that I should be doing. And this morning I realized what that means. I was in my element. I was exactly where I should be. It doesn't have to be that library, or even one in this city. But I'm fated to be in a library. It is where I am the happiest. And that was a beautiful thing.

Musical Interlude

2011-11-08T20:54:00.003-06:00

Like everything in my life, my musical tastes are made up of obsessions. I listen to everything I can by a particular artist for months on end until I find a new artist. For months I listened to nothing but Bishop Allen. I bought song after song and listened. Then I discovered Andrew Bird. I spent weeks finding new songs and reading Andrew's amazing lyrics. That oddly lead to a Great Big Sea phase along with The Pogues. Not sure how I got from Andrew Bird to celtic except to say that my mind works in mysterious ways. For the last couple of months it's been Joe Purdy and Damien Rice. And now I'm moving on.

When Jeff and I were up in Minneapolis this last time I got started talking to a friend of ours and he mentioned that I should listen to Lisa Hannigan. I thank him for that. I'd already heard Lisa's amazing voice on Damien Rice's albums. She started her career providing vocals for him. But I've been listening to her solo works and have fallen in love. The song I Don't Know has to be one of my favorite songs right now. I listen to it nonstop. I've picked up at least six of her songs now. I'm also enjoying Lisa's videos. Knots is a great song and a very interesting video. I think I like the video for Lille more than I like the song, although anything with a pop-up book is bound to have my attention.

But Lisa is really just starting out her solo career. With only two albums under her belt I actually ran through her music faster than most. So I'm sharing this time with Ray LaMontagne. I've been listening to Ray's work on and off for several years now. Only in the last month has it become a full blown obsession. Jeff recently caught me rocking out to You Are The Best Thing and was a tad worried about me. I guess I was breathing heavy and making some interesting faces. It's hard not to breath a little faster with Ray's voice in my ears. Gone Away From Me makes me sad and happy at the same time. I've only been through a quarter of his work so far but I'm sure I'll listen to most of the songs. I'll listen to both Lisa and Ray until I know most of their songs by heart. And then of course I'll move on. And my music collections just keeps growing. Thank god for iTunes points.

Ghosts of Halloween Past

2011-11-03T06:54:00.000-05:00

I've been going through some of my old pictures recently. Be warned. I'll probably post some of the older ones here. I'm a photo junkie, although I don't end up taking a ton of them myself. But I love when people send me old family photos. One of the ones I had in my album was the one below. Believe it or not, that's me, ready to head out for a fun night of trick-or-treating (although I looked stoned on candy already or maybe it was the wallpaper). I can't imagine how old I was. I'm terrible at guessing.

When I was younger, I went out dressed up a lot as cowboys or pirates or monsters. I was almost drawn to those type of action oriented characters. I also went out as an animal frequently. I remember an owl costume, a lion costume, and cat ears. I was never (to my knowledge) a princess, a fairy, or rockstar. I didn't do a lot of traditionally female costumes.

I've been having a discussion with a friend of mine about how difficult it is to find women's Halloween costumes that aren't a bit slutty. It seems like every costume is for sexy nurses, sexy cops, sexy ladybugs, sexy librarians (which I pull off in my daily life ;-) ), sexy witches... everything sexy. A witch becomes a sexy witch. So now if I were to dress up, I would probably go in a man's costume. No one wants to be thrust that deeply into my cleavage.

But I have gone out in more traditionally female costumes as these pictures prove. These were Halloween parties that my sister threw back when Jeff and I were first married. The first year is me in the flapper dress, one of my favorite costumes. Jeff went as Jacob Marley (I love a man in a literary reference costume). The second year I was lazy and went in a Renaissance costume we had. My friend Josh is with us as Dracula, looking rather dashing for the undead. So I guess there are some costumes out there that don't stop at the crotch or show off "huge tracts of land". Maybe there is help for next year's Halloween.

More Portents of Winter

2011-11-02T19:46:00.000-05:00

They are predicting our first snowfall tonight. The beginning of November! This is way too early for a first snowfall. Our furnace hasn't even been turned on yet. I'm pretending that it will stay rain in the hope that this isn't actually the beginning of winter (In my mind, it is officially winter after the first snowfall). But even if it doesn't snow tonight, in my heart I know it's coming. I'm suddenly cold.

My second omen that winter is right around the corner is that I cracked open my first pomegranate this evening. Those shiny red fruit are my winter addiction. I tasted a couple of the seeds and they had an acidic aftertaste that wasn't great. I'm guessing it is still too early in the season. It was heavy but not really heavy enough to be fully ripe. But another reminder that the dread season is coming. Bleh!

Winter Omen

2011-10-31T20:54:00.001-05:00

Just like Red-Wing Blackbirds signal the beginning of spring, Slate Colored Juncos are my first bird of winter. These migratory birds mean that winter is right around the corner. They have also been called "snow-birds". They normally arrive right before the snow arrives and don't leave until April. Today I saw my first junco at my feeder. It is a portent of things to come. I'm not happy. I'm not ready for winter.

All Work and No Play...

2011-10-25T22:07:00.000-05:00

Makes Cat bitter.

This week is the week from hell. I've had a month's worth of work dumped on me in the last two weeks. I have three days to get most of it done. And I have something (meetings, social events) every night of the week. I'm stressed and frazzled and have been working almost non-stop since 7 a.m. this morning. That was fourteen hours ago.

So I'm stepping back. Taking a moment to breathe. And growl into the blog. I don't mean to growl at you but somedays you just have to stand on the rooftops and curse. I hope you don't mind too much. I'll return to my regular insanity on the weekend.

Until then, here is a very young male deer that walked in front of our house last week at 3 o'clock in the afternoon along with his sister. It's rare to see them out during the day but even rarer to see them walk down the street like that. I found the encounter magical, although now I just hope that they found their way back to the woods okay.

Then I'm Happy and Sad For You

2011-10-23T21:00:00.000-05:00

It's been an odd weekend. A really odd weekend. It's been a weekend of both extreme happiness and extreme sadness. I've laughed heartily and I've cried miserably, within hours of each other. I've had warm bear hugs that warmed my heart and I've had consolation hugs that offered comfort.

My weekend started on Friday much like so many of them do. I had taken a half-day so we could drive up to Minneapolis for a friend's birthday party. The half-day was more fortunate that I realized. At 11:30 my department was called into a meeting to say that our boss had been let go. Now this was not just a boss the way I've had bosses before. This was a friend. We were all in shock. Some of the department was going out for lunch, just to get out of the office. I called Jeff to see if he could pick me up a bit early. I sent my now former boss an email to see if he needed anything. Jeff came right at the perfect moment, just in time for me to start crying. The office won't be the same without him around.

The drive up was okay but I was still pretty upset. Once we got up there though I was distracted. There was dinner at a sub place with a good friend of ours before heading over to the birthday party. We saw a ton of people that we only see twice or three times a year. So it was an evening of hugs, good conversation, plenty of food and friends, with some Rock Band thrown in. Jeff and I stayed late into the morning, finally leaving the party around 3, which is only about six hours after my bedtime. It was a great time.

The next morning my body woke me up at 8 a.m.. Stupid internal alarm clock. We had plans to take the birthday boy out for lunch. Partly to celebrate his big round number birthday (which will remain unnamed) but partly because the party had also been a going away party. He's moving south. I figured that this would be the last time I'd see him for quite a while so I wanted to squeeze as much time as I could out of the weekend. Lunch was filled with great conversation. When we walked out to the parking lot I was sad again. I gave him a long hug and a Take Care but there was so much more I would have like to say. While I know we'll keep in touch via emails and phone calls, it will be a while before we get to spend time in person. And I'll miss him.

My sadness was short lived though as we headed up to watch the Huskers destroy Minnesota. I'm not really a Huskers fan but we were actually surrounded by them as we watched the game. It's odd to be in a house in Minnesota rooting for them to be crushed. But root we did. And crush they did. We had a wonderful dinner with friends, talked about sports and babies and knitting, then we headed back to our friends house to watch the Cardinals game and talk. We talked about some tough subjects but they were amazing. Jeff and I slept in the kids rooms that night, so I can now say I've slept on Dora the Explorer sheets.

They woke us for breakfast of homemade french toast and the chance to go see a trapeze school do some flying. On Friday at the party we had met one of their friends who trapezes as a hobby. He invited us out. Jeff and I had planned to leave on Saturday but watching trapeze outdoors was too much to pass up. We stayed. But our times were off. We arrived after they had taken down the net for the season. No trapeze for us. Instead we gave hugs and headed home. It took us two extra hours. The poor kitty had licked her food bowl clean by the time we had gotten home. We had only expected to be gone 24 hours. I hadn't been home in almost 72. And it was a weekend filled with highs and lows. It went from one extreme to the other. And sometimes that's okay. I know that this will work out. It's just odd right now.

Stranger Than Fiction

2011-10-18T20:53:00.000-05:00

I watched Stranger Than Fiction again tonight. I'm not a huge Will Ferrell fan but I love him in this movie. I've seen it several dozen times now and every time I love it more. It's witty, funny, sweet, sad, and intelligent. It's the kind of movie I wish I had written. It not only breaks the fourth wall, it's all about the fourth wall.

What draws me to this movie is the characters and the characterizations. Jeff turned it on because he loves Maggie Gyllenhaal in this film. I can't blame him. She's beautiful in this movie. For me, I just want to be her character. I love the eclectic baker who fights the man and bakes goodies that make everyone drool. I love the kind-hearted character who gives away both her treats and her heart while still staying strong. I want to be her.

I also want to be Dustin Hoffman's character. I love the idea of the English professor who is enthralled with literature. His office is my dream office, filled with books, literature, discussion, and sunlight. I would love to have the time and intensity to read constantly and discuss books on a daily basis. I want to teach a class on "little did he know".

And I want to be Emma Thompson's character. I'm not sure I'd like the chain-smoking and ER stalking but I want that passion to write. To create. I have a card on my writing table that says "Passion is a form of madness." I've always craved that passion to write. Thompson plays the kind of eccentric writer I always wished I had become. Just more balanced.

I love this movie. I laugh, I cry, I dream. And in the end I finish the movie wanting to read and write and bake. But more than anything I want to live more fully. And that makes this movie special.

Momentary Maternal Mood

2011-10-17T22:24:00.001-05:00

This is my nephew Callen. I just spent the weekend in St. Louis with him, his parents, and my in-laws. We had a fantastic weekend filled with visiting, playing, and watching the Cardinals win (Go Cards!). But most of the weekend was spent holding, playing, adoring, and helping out as best I could with my 5 month old nephew.

Now nothing against my other nieces, nephews, and friends children, but this little guy has to be one of the most well behaved, quiet, and smiley children I've ever met. This is a little guy who laughed when he got his first shots. He smiles at everything. He almost never cries. He was sleeping four or five hours at a a stretch within days of birth. In other words, he's the kind of child every parent wished they had.

And I was suckered in. He was so smiley, so happy, so easy to snuggle with and help with. I actually found myself thinking about motherhood. I thought to myself that if I could guarantee that this is what my child would be like I would sign up without a thought. I guess Jeff echoed the same feelings when asked by Callen's mother Jen. I watched her feed him, I read to him and snuggled with him, I watched his first bath in the big tub (he'll be very angry with me one day for posting this picture). I was fascinated. And for a moment I thought about being a mother.

Then we decided to spell Jen and take care of the little one for an hour or two while she did some grocery shopping alone. He slept for a little while and woke up a bit fussy. This was odd. We had heard him fuss once the entire time we had been there. And it hadn't even been real fussing. Just a single whine or two. But now he was a tad fussy. So we changed him and I walked him around and he settled down. He relaxed enough to go back to sleep.

And when he woke up, he was a totally different baby. He was hungry. And we were unprepared. He cried. He screamed. We hadn't heard more than a little whimper all weekend and here he was crying so hard he was coughing. I held him while Jeff started getting food ready. I tried to soothe him. I walked around, I sang, I rocked. But nothing helped. I came very close to handing him to Jeff and hiding in the bathroom. Here was the perfect child, screaming because of something I'd done, or failed to do. He cried while we fed him. It was only when we skipped the cereal and gave him his bottle that he settled. Then the smiles were back. But by then I had been reminded. I'm not cut out for parenthood. I'm just not. I sighed a sweet smile when mom came home and I could unload groceries instead. I love my new nephew, just like I love all my nieces and nephews and godchildren and friend's children. I love taking care of them for a while and then handing them back. No offense Jen. He is an amazing child.

More Wise Words

2011-10-13T08:03:00.001-05:00

In the same quote document I pulled the quote in the previous post, I found this gem from Salman Rushdie. I need to memorize this quote. And practice it.

I’ll tell you a secret about fear: it’s an absolutist. With fear, it’s all or nothing. Either, like any bullying tyrant, it rules your life with a stupid blinding omnipotence, or else you overthrow it, and its power vanishes in a puff of smoke. And another secret: the revolution against fear, the engendering of that tawdry despot’s fall, has more or less nothing to do with ‘courage.’ It is driven by something much more straightforward: the simple need to get on with your life. I stopped being afraid because, if my time on earth was limited, I didn’t have seconds to spare for funk—Salman Rushdie (The Moor’s Last Sigh)

Blocked

2011-10-12T21:33:00.000-05:00

I've been dealing with some writers block recently and it has started affecting the blog. Normally I can still blog while I struggle to put things on paper in all the other areas of my life. These last couple weeks it's been different. I've even struggled to read. I pick up books and put them down minutes later. I don't remember the last time I had this much trouble doing the things I love.

I've also been thinking too much about all the things I've had to do. Work has been crazy and stressful and I feel like I need to be constantly productive in order to keep up. I was telling a friend just tonight about how when I feel overwhelmed I tend to become paralyzed. I think that's what's been happening. I think about the four billion things that I feel I should be doing, including blogging, and I can't seem to start anything. Once I do start something, I get through it and can move on. But I need those wake up calls to remind me of how to be productive.

This past weekend was one of those wake-up calls. We had a good friend come into town who I've known for almost 15 years now. We packed the weekend full but still had a lot of time to talk. It was amazing to just relax. I've forgotten how much I need it. Last night I sat down and finished the book I had been struggling on for weeks. I'll talk about it soon but I was just happy to dedicate a couple hours to reading. And I was happy to want to read. Now I'm happily moving on to a new book...or two...or three.

Tonight I'm writing a post. This isn't much of a post but it is at least something. My spell is hopefully broken. And I'll get back to regular blogging. But this is just my way of breaking that block. Get something out. I have a quote at work from a writer who talks about how she writes. She talks about those days where the writing flows and she feels good. When asked about the days when it doesn't flow, she responded that she scribbles nonsense until things start to make sense. That's what I feel like this post is, the nonsense I need to get through, for the rest of the words to flow. Here's hoping it works.

Here's the actual quote from the interview rather than my poor paraphrase:
From Marsha Diane Arnold:
Do you have any rituals in your work habits? If so describe them.

I prepare a cup of hot tea or herbs. I sit in my chair. I turn on my computer. I light a candle. I call to my muse. I stare at the screen or the last words I wrote. I sit. I sit some more. If I’m lucky, wondrous words come. If wondrous words don’t come, I scribble nonsense until they do.

Geek Crafts

2011-09-29T21:33:00.004-05:00

As you all know I knit pretty regularly lately. Currently I'm working on a Sackboy from Little Big Planet. Other than some issues with the tiny fingers he's been a joy to knit. I've had so much fun with this project that I'm tempted to do another one. Now I just need to stitch him up and we are good. My sister-in-law had knit one last year and I always thought that it looked cool. But the idea sat in the back of my mind and then got lost (like many things do). I didn't remember it until I was looking for patterns for a Cthulhu hat. And that's when I discovered Geek Crafts.

I'm a geek. Not a full blooded geek but I know enough to be dangerous. And in comparison to most of the people I work with, I'm a "super crazy geek". I was once called that by a coworker. I took it as a compliment, which is how he meant it...I think. So Geek Crafts is right up my alley. This combines two of my favorite things, geek topics and amazing crafts. The website is filled with projects that include sewing, knitting, baking, carpentry, model-making...and many more. People submit their projects along with the occasional pattern/instructions.

Every geek topic is covered: Doctor Who, Star Wars, Star Trek, Firefly, Harry Potter, Alice in Wonderland, video games, and so much more. The site posts on a consistent basis and almost daily I find myself looking at a new craft I want to make. Some of them are way beyond my talent. Like these Doctor Who nesting dolls below. All 11 doctors and they fit in a tardis (it's bigger on the inside).

Things like this Yoda Keychain make me want to geek myself out a bit more. I tend to downplay my geekiness, particularly at work and I think that needs to change. I could be carrying my keys along with the greatest Jedi ever (and no I don't care that the new films had him fighting. Yoda was cool even before I saw a lightsaber in his hand).

And some things just inspire me. I've been wanting to learn to sew. I think the totoro pillow below would help with that. I would be more than happy to make him as one of my first projects. Like Sackboy, when I'm excited about a project, I don't mind putting in extra hours to get it right.

Lastly, I have to stop by this crafters Etsy store. I need some Alice in Wonderland beads. Isn't this amazingly lovely? I would gladly dress myself in Tea Party garb...if it's this tea party. Geek Crafts, for the geek in all of us.

Love of my Life

2011-09-22T09:26:00.000-05:00

Years ago, Jeff broke into my phone and changed his name from the rather boring "Jeff" that I had listed it as, to "Love of My Life". He did it as a joke and it certainly worked when I tried to find him in my contacts the next time. But it's been rather long lived for a joke. Five years later, he's still listed as Love of My Life in my phone. I still address him that way when he calls. And he still is the love of my life.

My dear husband has a birthday today. I won't tell you how old he's turning this year (I'm pretty sure he'd be mad at me for that). It's been a year of changes. The next one will have even more. Jeff has shown me incredible courage and poise this year. As one of our good friends told me recently "he's really grown up a lot". He's so different now from the man I married but I love him just as much, if not more. We've lived through some incredible times together. I just hope he knows how special he is to me. Happy Birthday to the Love of My Life.

New Favorite

2011-09-20T22:12:00.000-05:00

I went out for a three hour dinner tonight which included two beautiful glasses of merlot, a mushroom lasagna that made me drool, a tasty tiramisu, and some absolutely incredible dinner conversation. My friend and I met at 6 and were still talking as we walked out the door at nine. The only reason we called dinner over was that she had somewhere to be at 9:15. Otherwise we'd still be there. Thanks Christina, for an amazing dinner!

So I have no real time for an actual post. That doesn't really matter though because I've been wanting to share this image from Joey Remmers that I found last week. I want a print of this. This might have to be my birthday present this year. He's selling them as part of a show he's doing at the Corey Helford Gallery. This print is called A Sheep Amongst Wolves. I really like the rest of Joey's work but it was this image that made me instantly take notice. I just love the colors and the lines. It's just gorgeous. Joey has a rather nice website filled with his painting and the tattoos he's inked. I love both. His ink work is a bit out of my price range but I bet you it is worth it. Perhaps when I finally have the money to get my ink done, I'll fly out to him. But until then, I think this print will tide me over.

Rainy Day Reading

2011-09-18T21:21:00.000-05:00

I had so much that I was going to get done today. I had been so productive last night and I was looking forward to really making progress on a couple of projects today. I have a letter for our homeowners association that I need to draft in the next day or so. That hung over my head all day. I have a house that severely needs to be cleaned out. We have reached that extremely cluttered stage that drives me crazy. I had some writing I was going to get done. But I woke up late this morning with a headache (stupid wine) so instead I drank endless pots of coffee, ate most of a loaf of beer bread, and spent the entire day reading.

I'm currently reading Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky which is a rather fascinating history of how the salt trade and production has shaped our world. I got interested in the book after reading At Home by Bill Bryson last week. Bryson had done a small section on salt and pepper for his dining room section. He didn't list where the salt information came from but when I found the book at the bookstore, I figured I'd found a definitive history. I love seeing how one product has impacted us so immensely. I would rank Salt right up there with A History of the World in Six Glasses as one of the more incredible food based histories I've read.

I read some of Salt, but the rainy day called for a little lighter fare today. So it was off to the library to return my stack of books and pick up more pictures books for my 1001 Children's Book Challenge. I picked up a brand new stack. I can't seem to leave the library without at least a dozen books. I brought them home and lay on the floor reading, like I was 10 again. I even started craving hot chocolate. I laughed and I marveled. So many of the books were just great. Diary of a Wombat by Jackie French made me laugh so hard I snorted. Even Jeff was surprised at how hard I was laughing. Joyful Noise, Poems in Two Voices has such interesting insect poems that I found myself rereading the poems over and over. A Van Allsburg made me gasp at the beauty of the illustrations. It wasn't the most productive day but it was a good one. A perfect rainy day.

Wine and Beer

2011-09-17T20:24:00.001-05:00

Jeff and I spent the night last night in Omaha. He had a cricket match early this morning and rather than drive in at 5 this morning, we headed there last night. We stayed in my favorite hotel. An old Embassy Suites that has become a Doubletree. The rooms are huge and beautiful. The hotel was quiet. And breakfast was free. Even the pool and the hot tub (which we took advantage of) were warm.

The match was not warm. It was freezing. Drizzling and about 50, I spent most of the time huddled in my sweatshirt or watching from the car. It was not the best weather for a match. Jeff's team lost but they put up a great struggle. It could have gone either way.

But the weekend trip was invigorating. Jeff and I had some incredible talks this weekend. It was nice to just get away from everything together. I came home ready to do things. I've cleaned the kitchen, gone through some paperwork, started a box of things to get rid of, and finished putting away dishes. Right now I'm working my way through a bottle of Barefoot Pinot Grigio, one of my new favorite wines. It's a bit too dry for Jeff but I'm not complaining on having the bottle to myself. The other thing I'm doing is baking. After last week's banana bread I decided that I need to make more quick breads. This week it's beer bread.

I'm using the Super Secret Bierling Recipe for beer bread. It is:

3 cups Self-Rising Flour
4 1/2 Tbsp Sugar
12 oz Beer

Mix together until moist. 35 minutes at 350 degrees. Make sure to flour your loaf pan before baking.

Yep, that's it, that's the list. It's such an incredibly simple recipe and it's so tasty. Both Jeff and I prefer this yeasty bread a little undercooked. I love the soft interior and the slightly crisp crust. It has a unique flavor. I'm sure you can vary that depending on what beer is used. Most of the time I just use whatever is in the fridge, tonight Bud Light. So it's a wine and beer night. Following an incredible day. I'm so lucky.

Poetry Friday

2011-09-16T09:29:00.000-05:00

I've been scatterbrained lately. I find myself writing notes as reminders and then forgetting where I put the notes. I have a post-it filled with blog ideas on it but I seem to have lost it. Time for a good housecleaning. So instead you get a poem. It's aptly titled "We Forget".

We forget

The romances of childhood
The stories that seem endless,
that pull us in, until we too
stand with Peter Pan, gazing in wonder
At a place too perfect to be imaginary

We forget
The roses and thorns of youth
Where every possible slight
Becomes catastrophe
And nothing seems real
Nothing seems possible

We forget
Our first tastes of freedom
The rush that comes with
Letting our parents let us go
As we step into something
Far greater than ourselves.

We forget
The first blush
When attraction turns from lust
Into something far deeper
Something stronger than moon
Or tides. Something eternal.

We forget

Scottish Library Mystery

2011-09-13T21:17:00.000-05:00

I posted a link today on Facebook about a mystery that is surrounding Scotland's libraries and festivals. Someone is creating elaborate and beautiful paper sculptures and leaving them in various libraries and at various book festivals as celebrations of books and the places that hold them. The sculptures started in March and so far there have been seven of them that have been dropped off. All of them are incredibly beautiful and very poignant for the location they are left in. Each is accompanied with a gift tag that makes me giddy. Here are some of the tags.

"For Central Library @ Edinburgh_CC 'A gift'--This is for you in support of Libraries, Books, Words, Ideas-- Libraries are Expeansive (It's hard to see the E crossed off. I'll just show this one).

"For @filmhouse--A Gift in support of libraries, books, words, ideas... and all things 'magic'."

This one left at the Poetry Library leaves me speechless "It Started with your name @by leaveswelive and became a tree... We know that a library is so much more than a building full of books...a book is so much more than pages full of words... This is for you in support of libraries, books, words, ideas...a gesture (poetic maybe?)

I found the story in a link from Neatorama from a community forum called This Is Central Station (read this, they cover this mystery, and the artists incredible words far better than I could). They cover all of the finds. The sculptures appear unnoticed and are left in random spots throughout the libraries. Often times they are not noticed for several days. The first location was the Scottish Poetry Library, then the National Library of Scotland, the Filmhouse, the Scottish Storytelling Centre, the Edinburgh Book Festival (two were left there), and the most recent is the Central Lending Library. Each are beautiful.

The cup reads Nothing beats a cup of tea or coffee and a really good book.

The cupcake reads Except a piece of cake.

The teabag reads By Leaves We Live

It really is a mystery but one of the best kinds possible. I hope that this person who is creating and leaving them knows how extraordinary these are. How inspiring these little miracles are. How incredible this kind of support is. I hope that these wonderful art pieces bring some notoriety to the libraries and festivals. I hope the artist understands how appreciated his or her gestures are. These made me giddy and made me cry with happiness.

In Mourning

2011-09-10T21:36:00.002-05:00

Dove hunting started September 1st in Iowa. For the first time in 93 years it is now legal to kill mourning doves in the state. The Des Moines Register had a huge article the very next day glorifying a group of hunters who bagged dozens of birds yesterday. And not surprisingly, I couldn’t be more pissed.

Now I’m not a hunter as you all know. Hell, I don’t even eat meat much less go out to kill the creatures that provide it. I don’t know the emotions that come with hunting. But dove hunting is particularly loathsome to me. Mourning doves have some of the most beautiful calls of any bird in our area. Their soft coos and owl-like calls are a constant in my neighborhood. Since I feed the birds I get to listen to the beautiful whistling their wings make when they take off. They are surprisingly pretty birds. But that’s not what really makes dove hunting unsportsmanlike to me.

The reason I’m pissed is that doves are relatively easy pickings. Doves tend to be the last to leave an area after all other birds are startled. They cannot silence their wing whistles so they are easy to track as they fly away. I will admit that they aren’t the brightest birds on the block (if hunters really wanted a challenge they should gun for crows). They can be downright stupid sometimes. Instead they are beautiful gentle birds who are going to see their population drop very significantly in the next couple years. Like the passenger pigeon (which was exterminated in less than 50 years) the dove I think will start to see a serious decline. And I’m saddened that I won’t be hearing their calls or their wing whistles. Like most times when humans and creatures mix, the creatures have lost. And very few are mourning them.

Early Poetry Friday

2011-09-08T20:52:00.001-05:00

I know I'm early for Friday but I'm out of time for any real posting today. So instead you get a poem.

Go Placidly
I'm not sure who the author is. Anyone know?
[Edit: Thanks to Partly Cloudy Knitter I now know that the poem is called Desiderata (Latin of course) and was written by Max Ehrmann in 1927. Thanks for the enlightenment!]

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
And remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly & clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull & ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud & aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain & bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing future of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity & disenchantment
it is perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue & loneliness.

Beyond wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees & the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labours & aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery & broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful.

Strive to be happy.

When Life Gives You...er Bananas...

2011-09-06T21:17:00.000-05:00

You make banana bread. I had the day off work today for a beautiful four day weekend. And I had four bananas that were just about dead. At least they were well past the point where Jeff and I would eat them. For the record I like mine with still a bit of green to them. So I decided to do what millions before me have done when they have overripe bananas. I made banana bread.

I've been reading a blog called Eat Me, Delicious for years now. The author regularly posts vegetarian recipes that make my mouth water. And the baking ones make me want to dust off a taupe and become a pastry chef. So when I went looking for banana bread recipes to try, I started with Eat Me, Delicious first. I thought I had remembered a chocolate banana bread that would be fun to try. I found the recipe and tried it. Not only is the bread easy to make but it's incredibly tasty as well.

The recipe can be found here and other than the buttermilk and the cocoa powder, most of the ingredients were already in the house. Assembly took less than half an hour so it was quick that way. There was a ton of actual baking time (70 minutes in total) but by the fifty minute mark I was already drooling with the great smell. It's a rich bread. Almost dessert-like. The chocolate and banana are well balanced. It was even more amazing right out of the oven when the chocolate chips were still melty. I'll make this more often. So tasty.

The Lost Thing Weekend

2011-09-05T21:28:00.002-05:00

I've mentioned before how much I love the work of artist Shaun Tan. I was introduced to his illustration work years ago when looking for Adam Rex images (not sure I see the connection but hey). Since then I've been buying Shaun Tan's books regularly. I have Tales from Outer Suburbia. I have The Arrival. I even found an old copy of The Red Tree on ebay. Any other books that I haven't bought I've picked up from the libraries. I love this man's work.

One of my favorite stories is The Lost Thing. The picture book tells the story of a central narrator, who remembers when he found a lost thing on the beach one day. No one else seemed to pay any attention to it (they were all too busy for odd lost things), so he took it home. His parents were too busy to notice. But the boy knew he couldn't keep The Lost Thing. So the next day he went down to the Bureau of Odds and Ends to turn it in. While they were waiting to fill out the numerous forms in triplicate, an odd looking janitor handed the boy a card and said that if he really cared about the thing to take it to this address. The boy searched for a long time (the Bureau was dark and scary anyway) and found the address. It was a courtyard filled with lost things of every size and shape. And they all seemed happy. The Lost Thing was happy to go and the boy returned to his life. As an adult now he has noticed recently that he's seeing less and less lost things. But then again he's really busy.

I read the book years ago but hadn't found a copy to buy. This past year though Shaun Tan released a collection of three of his stories (The Red Tree, The Lost Thing, and The Rabbits) in one volume called Lost and Found. This weekend while at Barnes and Noble, I spotted a copy and had to buy it. Even with my limited cash I knew this was a book I would treasure. I hadn't read The Rabbits yet so that was a treat (well not treat. It was powerful). When Jeff asked what I'd bought I made him go through all the stories. I was so excited.

After I got the book home I was searching through an animation blog I read when I stumbled on information about Annecy, an animation festival held annually in France. The festival webpage mentioned that Shaun Tan's The Lost Thing (animated short) had won in 2010. I had seen the trailer years ago so I quickly tracked down the film. It was on iTunes. I was expecting a $10 movie so I was thrilled to see the basic version of the film available for $1.99. I couldn't click the buy button fast enough. The animated short was perfect. Exactly the way I would have imagined the story done. I was so excited to finally own the story and the movie. I've been wanting them for a long time.

By the way, Shaun Tan has the best interview answer I've ever read about drawing. He was sitting in an interview and being asked about his illustration. The interviewer of course asked "When did you start drawing?". Shaun just replied "When did you stop?" And he makes a great point. We all grow up drawing. We may be terrible but as a kid we draw. It is only as we get older that we stop. The artists we love, just never stopped. I remember that when I start to worry about how bad I'll be at something.

Mood Shifts

2011-09-03T00:51:00.000-05:00

I wrote a post this morning and promptly left it at work. I was going to try to recreate the mood of the piece but I'm in such a different place than I was this morning that instead I'm going to sum up all the various moods I've had over the course of the day. And hope that it's enough to be interesting.

My piece this morning was on the Mourning Dove hunt which started in Iowa yesterday. For the first time in 93 years, people are allowed to hunt doves and I'm actually pretty pissed about it. I had a ton of great points about why I'm angry but that is saved on a different computer and to be honest after the afternoon and evening I've had I'm so far from angry that it would be hard to get back into the right mental framework. I'm also a bit drunk so if this makes less than perfect sense I apologize.

My work day was actually pretty fantastic. My coworker brought me the Wicked soundtrack to preview. I had mentioned that I want to see the musical (I'm one of the four people on Earth who LOVED the book) but I haven't heard any of the music. So I spent my morning listening to that and working. The afternoon was really productive. While I worked I listened to hours of Regina Spektor radio on Pandora.

After work we met my parents for dinner at this really tasty pizza place in town. Then we headed back to their house. Jeff and I had something we wanted to talk to them about that we've been putting off. It was wonderful to sit down and talk things through. They were awesome about everything. I'm so lucky to have the parents I do. Thanks Mom and Dad!

After hanging out for a bit Jeff and I headed off to the local comedy club. We grabbed drinks and talked before the show. Both openers were a lot of fun but the main comedian (Bert Kreischer) was hilarious. I was so enthralled by a story he was telling that I forgot where I was for a moment (although the Jameson and the two beers didn't hurt). I laughed for two hours straight. It was fantastic. As we left the club at midnight, the wind was picking up. A thunderstorm was brewing. We found a nice quiet spot to sit and watch the rain and the storm and talked. A perfect end to a perfect day.

I'm sure I'll grab that post some time this weekend and post it. But it won't be tonight. Comedy clubs and anger don't go together. I'm too tired and happy to work up a good lather. So this evening I'll go to bed with a smile on my face, remembering that this morning my mood was completely different. I'm happier with this.

Knitting Night Wednesday

2011-08-31T21:30:00.004-05:00

It's Wednesday and I've spent most of the evening out knitting. That means I'm energized but it's way to late to do a decent post. So instead I'm putting up a picture or two. I thought I'd share a couple from my recent trip to the Iowa State Fair. I know you'll be surprised but most of these will be animal focused.

I love the fair and I particularly like walking through the animal barns. This year the animal production industry opened their new educational facility. It's an attempt by the industry to fight against the stereotypes that we animal activists are creating. I'm not buying it but the animals there were pretty cute.

Like a baby ostrich. Yeah that's an ostrich! He was about a foot tall.

Or the baby turkeys. These were tough to watch. They kept pecking at each other.

There were quite a few miniature horses this year. And I mean miniature.

And on the other end there was the biggest boar. This sucker was huge.

Lastly, there was a pretty fish. Well okay a knitted fish. I want to make one.

Cthulhu-less

2011-08-28T17:37:00.004-05:00

When we were at Gen Con I walked past a man wearing a knitted Cthulhu hat and thought about stopping him to ask for a picture. Now I wish I had. It was one of the best ones I've seen and I would have loved to try to find a pattern for it. And honestly I was just so excited that it wasn't a Jayne hat (we saw plenty of those). I LOVE Firefly but seriously, those hats were everywhere.

Since we've been home I have been looking for a good knitting pattern for a similar hat. In a fit of insanity I went out and bought the perfect dark green yarn to make it out of. And that's when I got stumped. All of the patterns I've found so far are either for sale (I was hoping for free), crochet, or not the style I'm looking for. I've been to hundreds of sites looking at them. Years ago I found one where the tentacles rolled up into the brim. I'd love to find that again.

And to make things worse, I'm not excited about starting anything else until I can do my Cthulhu hat. I'm obsessed. The one pattern that was close, turned out to be crochet even though it was listed as knit. So I'm stumped. But I think I'll just start on that sweater I've been meaning to knit. By the time I finish that I'll either have found the perfect pattern, or forgot that there is such a thing as a Cthulhu hat.

This one is the closest I've found

Legi, intellexi

2011-08-25T19:42:00.005-05:00

My mother had a pithy saying book that had poems and phrases to put into people's yearbooks. I remember reading it as a kid and laughing at the archaic wordings. I've forgotten most of them by now except one. I'm not sure when you would put this in someone's yearbook but I like the poem.

"Latin is a dead language,

it's plain enough to see.

It killed off all the Romans

and now it's killing me."

I found it funny then. But truth be told I wanted to learn Latin. It would have been my first choice for a language in high school (that and French) but my high school didn't offer either. And I wasn't about to attend the local Catholic high school just to get a Latin lesson. So here I am, almost 20 years after high school, finally learning my language of choice.

My parent's both took Latin in high school (were forced to take it, that is) and still can remember quite a bit. They also have first year Latin primer that they were willing to lend me. That, along with a borrowed stack of books from a friend who was a Latin minor, and I have quite the impressive collection of resources. I've started going through the first year book and was excited to see that I could not just read but understand some basic dialogue. My vocab still has a long way to go and the grammar keeps stumping me. I think I've asked my friend dozens of times why the language has both cases and declensions (he explains it, I understand, and then forget the explanation 20 minutes later). I'm hoping the grammar will come as I read more.

Learning the language though has taught me how little I know of English grammar. As an English major I should be well versed in tenses, voice, syntax, and cases. What I've learned by learning Latin is that I have really no idea how English even works. I know when a sentence sounds right. So in addition to learning Latin, I'm learning English grammar. And it's actually helping (note the irregular sentence. Strunk and White would not be pleased).

Latin is the root of so many languages in the world, plus it's a fascinating language on it's own. I'm only starting to delve into it but I love the way sentences can be structured in many different ways. I love the words themselves. I'm enjoying the challenge of learning a new language while having the familiarity of recognizing roots of English words. Latin isn't a dead language yet. And it's certainly not killing me.

Socks!!!

2011-08-23T22:05:00.004-05:00

At long last I've finally finished my first pair of socks. They aren't real socks (no heels) but comfy tube socks that I plan to spend the entire winter in. These are the perfect around the house socks. They are by far the warmest socks I've ever worn. Acrylic apparently wins out over wool, at least in this case. They are soft and comfy and warm and mine. My first homemade socks and I made them. Can you tell I'm a bit excited?

A close-up on the pattern. It's actually really simple. And boring.

White Knight Syndrome

2011-08-23T12:19:00.002-05:00

I've been falling prey to white knight syndrome lately. You know the syndrome. The princess locked in her high tower waits for the white knight to ride up on his horse and save her. What she does while locked in the tower is anyone's guess. The stories don't cover that part. I imagine her twiddling her thumbs. Lately I've been feeling like that princess, locked in my tower of a job, waiting for Jeff to finish school and come save me.

Last night I had a conversation with a friend that turned odd. And got me thinking. I continued the coversation long after we had signed off (I'm a writer. Having conversations with people who aren't there is par for the course) and I came to some conclusions. There aren't any white knights and honestly, saving myself will feel far more satisfying anyway. I'm waiting on the wrong thing. Or more to the point, waiting is the wrong thing. I'm the kind of girl who's never liked towers and waiting. So last night I decided to break out of this passivity.

It's odd. I've never been a particularly passive person. I'm quiet and bookish and deliberate. But not passive. After all, my anthem in college was "Not a Pretty Girl" by Ani Defranco. In the last couple years I've noticed that I've been feeling more and more trapped. And that stems from my increasing passivity. Last night I decided to stop waiting. No I'm not doing anything drastic. Jeff will still have the option to finish school. But I'm going to apply for the jobs I want. I'm going to write the books I want. I'm going to do what I need to do to be happy (something Jeff is constantly reminded me to do). That way, when Jeff is finished with school, I won't need saving. I'll already be happy and smiling and saved.

Epic Mickey

2011-08-22T15:13:00.006-05:00

Jeff and I were in Target this past week and noticed as we walked in that they had a couple video games listed for relatively cheap (half price actually). I was shocked to see that one of the games was Epic Mickey, which I've been drooling over for months now. Ever since I saw the graphics on this game I've been lusting after it. Even at half price (Half!!!), we hesitated. Our budget doesn't have a ton of wiggle room. In the end though, we asked the clerk for assistance and dropped the coveted game into the cart. We were going to buy.

Jeff and I had played Kingdom Hearts when it first came out and had been instantly hooked on it. I'm a huge Disney fan (we both are) and the mix of Disney characters, puzzles, and fighting had hooked us. We played almost non-stop for the entire first weekend. We only left the couch for bathroom and sleep breaks. So we knew that another Disney game would suck us in just as much. And it did.

Epic Mickey is not just a fighting game and not just a character game. It has dimensions to it. Your character, Mickey, has to fight his way through the Wasteland (a deranged version of Disneyland) to set about making things right. He had originally tipped an entire container of thinner into the world, creating the great Thinner Incident. Now Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (Mickey's real-life predicessor) has taken over the world. Mickey must turn things back to the way they were before. He is equipped only with a paint brush which can wield either paint or thinner. Thinner makes things go away, Paint makes them appear. It's that simple...mostly. There are things you need to uncover to move forward, there are gears that need to be painted before they can turn. We just recently learned that you can remove sections of the floor and trap creatures beneath it by thinning and then repainting.

I love the fact that the game is set in Disneyland (albeit an odd looking one). We've already had to face the clocktower from the "It's a Small World Ride." We're currently wandering our way through Tomorrowland trying to get the People Mover to work. Many of the parks rides are there, in some form or another. Main Street is a twisted place called Mean Street with buildings so accurate I could recognize them from their real-life counterparts even without signs. "Hey look the ice cream shop." The graphics are downright stunning. The first time I saw Mean Street (with the tilted off kilter castle in the background) I gasped. It was amazing looking. Ostown (a take on Mickey's Toon Town) is just as colorful and interesting look as the land is in Disneyland.

The characters are fun. The puzzles are challenging. The only complaints I can think of about the game are the same ones that I had with Kingdom Hearts. Disney lays out the path a little too easily sometimes (it is a kids game after all) and that there are often too many hints, which hinder smooth play. There is a lot of dialogued hints which must be passed before you can get to game play. In Kingdom Hearts they were from Goofy and Donald. In Epic Mickey they come from The Gremlins (characters created by Roald Dahl incidentally) that are helping Mickey through the land.

Jeff and I have no idea how far we have progressed through the game at this point. We might be half, we might have just scraped the surface. All of the Disney games we've played are like that. I enjoy the complexity though. My feeling is that we have a long way to go. And I'm not upset about that. I'm excited to figure out the puzzles. I'm excited to see the way the rides have been corrupted. And more than anything I'm excited to see what the world looks like whole. I love Disney's story-based video games. This one is now at the top of my list.

Follow the Red Brick Road

2011-08-17T22:04:00.004-05:00

I live on Grand Avenue on the west side of Des Moines. I work on Grand Avenue on the east side of the city. So everyday I drive Grand the entire 15 miles (yeah I'm spoiled) that it takes me to cross the city and get from home to office. Des Moines is a small city, in both population and size.

Grand Avenue though is picturesque. It's one of the prettier streets in the city, passing by some fantastic historical mansions, gorgeous churches, a college, and even the Governor's mansion. I pass some beautiful architecture on my commute.

The street is being resurfaced right now though. For about fifteen to twenty blocks it is what the city calls "rough road". That means that all the smooth asphalt has been stripped away and the road has been graded. It's a bouncy couple of blocks. But when I was driving in this morning I noticed something that I hadn't before. Under all the asphalt is brick. Grand was once a brick road.

I'm not sure why that surprises me. It's one of the oldest streets in the city. And brick paving was the only paving for nearly a century. But I'd never seen the bricks. I never thought about how beautiful the street would have looked paved with those even square red bricks. The masonry work is very good, very even (at least of what I can see). All this got me thinking though about all the history that is buried right under my feet. Not just on Grand but in general. I'm standing on centuries of history every moment. Each piece of land has a story to tell. I'm not sure why I never noticed.

All these years of driving down Grand, twice a day, and I never thought about how it had been paved before. I wish I had seen it totally brick paved. It would have been stunning. But I'm glad I got to see those bits of bricks. They made the rough road worth it.

Regina Spektor

2011-08-16T20:23:00.006-05:00

The first time I heard Regina Spektor, I was listening to Pandora. The song On the Radio came on and I was at first unsure of what to make of the lyrics. She does talk about driving hearses through screaming crowds. But then I was fascinated. Even with the sometimes gothic themes, the upbeat melody, odd lyrics, and sweet voice made me fall in love with the song. I went home and bought it that day. And listened to it over and over and over until I'm sure Jeff was sick of it.

The next day I set up a Regina Spektor Pandora station. And found myself in love with every song of hers that they played. The Russian born artist writes some of the most interesting lyrics I've ever heard but it's her voice that really pulls me in. The first time we watched Prince Caspian (the second Chronicles of Narnia film) and her song played at the end, I knew her voice right away. It is such a beautiful voice. It's delicate and pure. And more than anything, it is unique. I bought The Call shortly after.

But I still can't get away from the lyrics. I wish I had written the words to The Calculation. They are offbeat in the best possible way. The song and video for Fidelity makes me laugh and smile every time I see it. It's an odd video (not as strange as Nine Crimes by Damien Rice but close), but I love the ending. A feel good video. I just recently watched the video for Better, a song I've loved since I first heard it, and was just as enchanted with the video.

It's not often that I find a songwriter who produces song after song that I love. Most of the time I find one or two songs from other artists that are just okay. I haven't heard a single Regina Spektor song that I haven't adored. Now I'm just waiting for her to come to town so I can see her live. Until then I'll have to make due with my always growing iTunes collection of her work and the videos she puts up on YouTube. Take a listen. I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

[All video links are to the official videos with the exception of The Calculation.]

My Type of Bling

2011-08-13T13:59:00.003-05:00

I love necklaces. Other than my wedding ring they are the only jewelry I'm willing to wear. We've bought a couple nice necklaces over the years but most of the ones I wear on a regular basis are thrift store buys or odd pieces that I've found in art stores. I love a single pendent with some character. So when Jeff took me over to a little bead store in Valley Junction called Fish Lips, I went a little crazy.

I only bought one chain but above are all the pendents that I bought. The ones on the chain are what I'm currently wearing. I switch them out every couple of days. I wore courageous journey to work on Wednesday but for the rest of the week it's been this three pendent combination. I'm excited to try out Find next. I know they aren't all that shiny or lovely but they really mean a lot to me. Of course now I have a new shop to avoid. Well...only if I want to have money at the end of the week.

Poetry Friday

2011-08-12T12:40:00.003-05:00

I know I posted already today but I've been wanting to post this poem for a long time now. This is a poem that I read years ago when I was in college and the first two lines have stuck in my head for well over a decade. I was young and inexperienced and this poem impacted me in ways I couldn't understand at the time. It is not for small children or the prudish.

Sex Without Love
by Sharon Olds

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health--just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.

New Books!!!

2011-08-11T21:21:00.006-05:00

I walked away from the convention quite a bit poorer and a majority of that money was spent on...can you guess?...books. Shocked, aren't you? I have a bit of a book addiction. But there were tons of books that I wanted to buy and almost all of them were at a fantastic price. So I splurged. And came home with a couple new reads.

First up was a beautiful Art of Bone book done by Jeff Smith. If you don't remember, I mentioned my love for the comic series in this post. I read the Bone series nearly addictively, moving from book to book. I even made two library trips, the same day so that I could keep on reading. So this book was a great find and for a very decent price. I love art-of books.

The next title on the list was the second book of the Mouse Guard series. I'm not sure how I missed that it had come out already. I read Fall many years ago and have been eagerly awaiting Winter to see what happens. When I was walking through the convention hall on the last day I spotted a copy and promptly bought it. And then moved it to the top of my stack of books to read.

The Mouse Guard stall was doing a "buy one get one free" deal so I also got to pick up a second book. I looked through their interesting titles but decided on a Field Guide for a graphic novel series called Berona's War. The salesman described it to me as Spy Versus Spy meets Looney Tunes. With that kind of description, how could I possibly pass it up? After I finally get to read the field guide I'm sure I'll be tracking down the original series as well.

But my last and most exciting purchase was two books from the Looking for Group webcomic. I've been reading Looking for Group for a while now and love it (I posted on that one here). I also read the author and illustrator's other comic Least I Could Do. So when I found out that they would be having a booth at Gen Con I knew I had to stop by. Jeff went a little fanboy standing in front of Ryan Sohmer and Lar DeSouza and I have to admit that I was a bit excited. It was a bit of a thrill to meet the creators of not one but two of your favorite comics. We bought Books 1 and 3 (I already have 2) and also picked up a stuffed Richard and Bunny (yes he's supposed to be riding the bunny. If you read the comic you understand). It didn't hurt that the guys were incredibly nice. Both of the editions were signed and I walked away a very happy fan.

Costumes

2011-08-09T21:41:00.004-05:00

Inspired by all the amazing Victorian and steampunk costumes I saw this week (like the beauty above) I picked up a sewing pattern for an outfit. We won't be going back to Gen Con for another two years most likely, so I should have time to brush up on my stitches. I haven't done a ton of sewing and my preference is for hand-sewing, so this should be a bit of a challenge. But I have to try. Isn't that red one just lovely? Now imagine it with a pair of goggles and a steampunked pistol.

The Best Week in Gaming

2011-08-09T16:01:00.005-05:00

I got back in town last night after spending the week in Indianapolis, IN for Gen Con, "the best four days in gaming". It's a convention for games and gamers. There are video games, role playing games, miniatures games, board games, and any other type of game you could imagine. It's a weekend filled with geek t-shirts, cool costumes, and the sound of dice. For me, Gen Con lasted a week. And it lived up to its name. This week has been a fantastic week of gaming and geekery.

Some well-known characters

The trip really started last Tuesday, when our friend Jon and my brother John and his family arrived in town (we had three Johns/Jons in attendance, which was a tad confusing sometimes). After dinner we headed home to start the gaming right. Our friend Jon had brought down a ton of board games which we made good use of. We spent the entire week playing board games, playing role playing games (D&D, Shadowrun), and walking around the convention hall. Oh yeah and a lot of eating (if you're ever in Indy stop by Palamino for fantastic meal).

The group at dinner at the beautiful Old Spaghetti Factory.

Games conventions are fun because of all the great people. Almost everyone is friendly and most are doing something interesting. We demoed games, checked out some great costumes, and just spent time soaking up the energy. There were people everywhere in the convention hall, sitting down to game, talking games. Everywhere you looked were unique t-shirts and fun. And the party never seemed to stop. We stayed at the Embassy Suites which was connected to the convention center. At three in the morning there were still gamers playing down in the lobby. One of my favorite comments was Wednesday night at 2 in the morning when my friend Jon looked out the window of the room and said, "there are people still down there playing. These are my people." I'll second that, these are my people. I've come back energized and excited.

Life-sized Robo Rally, a game Jon brought but we never got a chance to play.

We spent all our time with my family and most of that was playing game after game. We wandered around the city a bit, walked a lot, attended a live action dungeon, but the rest of the time was spent sitting at a table rolling dice and laughing. My mother even joined us for a D&D run (something she's never done before). Two of Jon's games, Pandemic and Betrayal at the House on the Hill, became instant favorites with my nephew (and the rest of us). We played a great Shadowrun adventure that had most of us on the edge of our seats at the end. And no matter what we played we laughed and had a fantastic time. One of the best weeks I've had in a long time.

Packing and Planning

2011-08-02T12:38:00.003-05:00

I'm in the mad rush to get everything done before we leave on vacation tomorrow. I'm heading out to Indianapolis for GenCon and I'm a bit excited. In an odd move for me, I've left packing until the very end. I'm normally one of those people who starts packing the week before a vacation. I'm a bit of a planner if you couldn't tell.

So with company arriving in the next couple hours and getting ready to be gone for a week, these last two days I haven't really thought about blogging. I'll be back with plenty of pictures. There will be fun costumes everywhere. I'll also be back with some good stories. This will be a weekend to let my inner geek out to play. Embrace your geekiness is the family motto. So I'll be back next week with pure geek wonderfulness. Until then, have a fantastic week.

An Ode

2011-07-30T22:08:00.003-05:00

to a hot bath.

It's Saturday night, and like any Saturday night when I'm not going out, I'm heading upstairs to draw as hot a bath as I possibly can stand and spending the next hour reading and falling asleep in the tub. It's practically a ritual. I like my baths so hot that they are painful to step into. As the water gets cold, I let it out and draw more hot water. I know it's wasteful, but I can't help myself.

And I'll stay in the bath for at least an hour. I never wash. Baths have nothing to do with getting clean. That's what showers are for. Baths are for relaxing, normally with a glass of wine and a good book. Tonight I'm reading Oscar Wilde. I'll read for a while until the book gets heavy and then I set it on the side and let myself fall asleep. Sadly I don't have a deep enough tub where I have to worry about drowning. I can sleep peacefully in the tub and never have my face come in contact with the water.

I get my love of baths from my dad. He would regularly head for the tub after a hard day with a book and a glass of scotch. He never drank except for the bath tub. Jeff never takes baths. My mother hates them. But I can't live without them. If I go for too many weeks without my hot water fix I start to get irritable. I consider it one of my greatest indulgences. And the water is calling my name. Time for relaxation time.

Stupid Messed-up Internal Clock

2011-07-28T06:27:00.003-05:00

To my sleep deprived brain, the clock read 6:30. That would have made me late. I hate to be rushed in the morning but I jumped out of bed and hopped in the shower. It was only after I'd rushed through my entire morning routine that I realized that the clock had actually been reading 5:30. So I'm up. Early.

I have veggies to cut for a cookout we're going to tonight. I have lunch to pack to get me through the work day. I should be playing with the cat (she's been starved for attention). So the extra hour is actually a good thing. But there was a moment this morning when I realized my mistake that I just stood and said Damn. That sleep would have been nice.

But I'll have time. I have two days of work until one of the longest vacations I've ever taken. Eleven blissful days of vacation, seven of which will take place in Indianapolis for "the best four days in gaming". I'm so freaking excited that it's been hard to focus on anything else. Of course once Gen Con comes I won't get any sleep. I know me. I have a family who are early rises. A friend who's going with us is a night owl. I know I'll burn the candle at both ends. And for once, I'm cool with that. I'll sleep sometime. It clearly wasn't today.

Guess What I'm Reading

2011-07-25T19:51:00.004-05:00

I had the day off work and spent most of the afternoon cleaning out my back bedroom. I can now recognize that it holds a bed and even a desk. It was in pretty bad shape. While in there, I started looking over my bookcases for titles to get rid of. I do this every couple of years. I'm a bit compulsive as a book buyer. Without frequent weedings I would have no place to walk in my house. So I was looking to start a box. A huge series of books attracted my attention as possible shelf space but after glancing through them I think I'm going to keep them. They're just such fun.

Years ago my parents subscribed to the Time-Life Series of books. We would get beautiful hard bound books in the mail on every subject imaginable. My favorite then, and possibly still now, was a series called The Enchanted World. This was an illustrated collection of stories and myths broken out by subject. There are books on ogres, witches, brave knights, creation myths, christmas, and dozens of others. This 21 volume series covered every type of story imaginable. They are beautifully bound, richly illustrated, and amazingly heavy. For a fanciful child like myself, they were pure gold.

I've always loved fantasy stories and tales of the occult. I remember spending hours pouring over the book on witches and witchcraft trying to learn spells that would allow me to vanquish my enemies and make boys fall in love with me. In high school I played with tarot and palmistry, often earning me some interesting nicknames. I still love fairy tales and myths.

So I'm going back through those old stories that I may or may not have read. I started and finished The Book of Beginnings which covers creation myths and origin myths from around the world. There are Native American tales about how corn was introduced to the world. I was fascinated by the old Navajo story of the Woman Who Fell From the Sky and the Finnish story about the Princess of the Air who falls to earth and is impregnated by a clash of air and water, creating mankind. I particularly like the old Norse myths. The cover image tells an interesting tale of how animals got their tails. The section on Noah's Ark myths covered an interesting story about how cats came to be that I've never heard before.

I'm now reading Dragons. With only 150 or so pages for each book, many covered with illustrations, it shouldn't take me too read all the way through. Check out this 1985 trailer for the series. This would have come out right when I was the hungriest for stories. At nine I was desperate to still believe in magic. I wanted the world of fairies and dwarves and dragons to be real. I craved something beyond the ordinary. Funny enough I still do. These books are a treasure trove. I can't get rid of them.

With Apologies to Alan Moore

2011-07-19T20:51:00.003-05:00

Over the weekend, Jeff and I sat down to watch the movie Watchmen. The previous weekend it had been The Dark Knight so apparently we’re on a dark superhero/supervillian kick. I’d been hesitant to watch Watchmen. I’d loved the graphic novel and movie adaptations tend to disappoint. Plus I knew that Alan Moore had been unwilling to even have his name associated with the film. So I went in with lower expectations. And I have to apologize to Alan Moore. I enjoyed the film, quite a bit.

The movie had the same gritty feeling as the novel and that’s what I liked. The characters were perfect, particularly The Comedian and Rorschach. It is exactly how I imagined they would sound. In fact, I thought most of the characters were pitch perfect. The plot had some significant changes from the graphic novel including cutting out an entire storyline. But many people thought the novel was unfilmable so I know that they had to make some big choices on what to include and what to cut out. Like most action films of the current day, this was bloody and violent. But the graphic novel was as well and I think I can almost say that the film-makers downplayed some of the violence of the story by leaving out the secondary storyline. The ending was very different. But this is one of those rare, rare times when I will say that the movie might have improved on the book. The ending to the novel was a bit out there, a bit far-fetched. The ending to the film made total sense. It tied the entire Dr. Manhattan plotlines together.

The visuals were fantastic. Like many others have said before, the opening credits were just amazing. I don’t know how they shot those but I want to learn. The darkness and grime of the city was perfectly captured. The movie still kept a bit of a comic book feel to it though. The fight sequences were a bit over the top though. These are mortals who donned masks to play vigilantes, not superheroes. Some of the fight sequences would have been better served with a touch more realism. Over all I was really impressed by the film. I enjoyed the endings and the overall story. I enjoyed the characters and the visuals. It was a fun film that I was not disappointed with.

Plus it was nice to watch a movie that had more male nudity than female nudity. A rarity in Hollywood. J

The Straw That Broke the Camel's Back

2011-07-16T12:56:00.006-05:00

I've finally managed to do it. I broke a bookcase. I knew it was just a matter of time. I'm nice to my books, hard on my cases.

I have five bookcases in my library: one for books I still have to read, one and a half for fiction, one and a half for nonfiction, and one for children's books. My children's book bookcase decided that it had had enough this past week. The second shelf, which holds picture books, broke and dropped its contents to the floor. Jeff was watching TV on Friday when he heard a loud crash and the cat come running down the stairs. He went upstairs to find my books all over the floor.

Here you can see where the shelf had been

He piled my books up on the bed we have in the library and called me. So now I have to go out and find a new bookcase. My idea is that this next one will be a quality case. Something that will move with me from house to house. Something I can show off. Not the cheap plyboard ones I bought from Target years ago. They've held up, but my bookcases have to be strong. I finally pushed one to the breaking point. Who knows how long the others will last. Particularly with this load.

Poetry Friday

2011-07-15T15:24:00.005-05:00

It's been a long time since I posted a poem to the blog. I've been missing Poetry Fridays. And since my last post was so rambling and incoherent, I figured I would share a very beautiful and sparse little poem that touches me every time I read it. I read poetry and books and discover the secret on a regular basis. But I always forget.

The Secret
by Denise Levertov

Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.

I who don't know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me

(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even

what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,

the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can't find,

and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that

a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines

in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for

assuming there is
such a secret, yes
for that
most of all.

Wanderlust

2011-07-14T20:44:00.003-05:00

We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls--Anais Nin

I need a vacation. I actually have one coming up. I'm going to Gen Con in August. It's a gaming convention in Indianapolis. I'm so incredibly excited that I've started a countdown. And of course time slowed down. I realized today that it's been an entire year (almost to the day) since my last real vacation. And for a traveler like myself, that's a long time. I'm not really a gypsy but I have an odd wanderlust. I don't like to stay in one place too long.

I have lived in my house for six years. That is way too long by my standards. I'm not a nester. I once told my boss that I'd prefer to move every year. Not just because I like the change, but because I'm more likely to live simply that way. I've worked at my job for five years and I find myself longing for something new. I once read a writer say that she wrote so that she could live many lives. That's how I am. I tell myself stories so that I can live multiple lives.

When I found the quote from Anais Nin, it just struck me. This is why I travel. This is why I tell stories. This is why I move. I'm searching. I'd say that I hope I find what I'm searching for but I don't really want. It's the search that draws me. To borrow another quote from another brilliant (and feisty) writer: The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity--Dorothy Parker.

Bumper Cars

2011-07-11T18:59:00.003-05:00

Murphy's Law seems to say that the better your self-confidence is, the more likely you are to have something bring you back down to earth. I've been having a good week. A great week really. So of course Murphy decided to remind me that I'm only human. With the most bone-headed move in the history of bone-headed-ness.

I hit a gravel pile. Not only did I somehow manage to not see a 3 foot high pile of gravel but I ran into it hard enough to put a significant dent in my bumper. I was driving over to Wild Birds Unlimited this afternoon to pick up some seed. Traffic had been slow on the way there and I was a bit nervous after watching the person in front of me swerve repeatedly into the next lane. So I should have been ultra-cautious. Instead, I was so relieved to get away from them. I turned into the parking lot which was having work done. I drove around a gravel truck that was almost too far into the intersection to let me in. I was still thinking about my brush with the truck, when my car stopped. Okay well first there was a loud bang, then I stopped.

My first reaction was that I'd found the deepest pothole imaginable. That's when I realized that my front drivers side tire was up higher than the others. And right in front of me was a gigantic pile of gravel. In my defense it was the same color as the pavement. But I should have seen it. I should have been able to easily avoid it. But I didn't. I'm not proud of this fact. I'm just saying.

I put the car in reverse and stepped on the gas lightly. Nothing. I could hear my wheels spinning but no traction. I rocked the car and hit reverse. I was just about to get out and call Jeff when two of the construction workers working on the parking lot came over. They pushed the car off the pile and checked out the damage. The plastic front bumper had been pushed in at least a foot. There was gravel in every nook and cranny. I offered the guys money, got back in the car, called Jeff, and immediately broke into tears. I drove home without bird seed and we took the car in for an estimate. Luckily the mechanic was able to pull it back mostly into shape. We're still getting a new bumper but at least I'm not constantly reminded of the disaster. Thanks Murphy. Now I'm back to normal.

Where No Man Has Gone Before

2011-07-10T09:30:00.002-05:00

I have to admit that I always thought that NASA would have a shuttle program. I took the launches for granted having grown up well after a man had walked on the moon. We sent up astronauts. On a regular basis. That is just what we did.

So yesterday feels a bit like an end of an era. With the last launch of a space shuttle for the foreseeable future, I feel a strange sense of loss. Like the future that Science Fiction writers have predicted for decades just won't be coming true. When SciFi writers in the 50s started writing about space travel it was because it was becoming a possibility. When writers talked about long distance space travel or space station living, it was because those things were on the horizon. In a way this end of the program, induced by budget cuts, feels like the end of those dreams. What will we shoot for now?

I know that budgets are finite. I know that cuts have to be made or taxes raised (I'm all for taxes by the way). What I wonder is why we make the cuts we do. I know that NASA's program seemed less immediately necessary. But I still can't help but lament the death of dreams. Will children still grow up wanting to be astronauts? Will we still look to the stars and hope to reach one? Will we ever find the cold still expanses of space? I know I'm being melodramatic. But space made me dream. I grew up on the words of Bradbury and Niven and Roddenberry. I grew up with dreams of new life and new civilizations. And today the universe feels a little more closed off.

Happy Fourth of July

2011-07-04T23:20:00.002-05:00

It's Independence Day and you know what that means. We get to blow things up. I love fireworks. I become about four every time I go to a fireworks display. I giggle and ooohh and ahhh. I'm normally standing there with my mouth open. So here's to fireworks and the fourth. Happy Birthday America.

PS. I'm not sure how but I don't have a single fireworks photo in my iPhoto. I'll have to check the other computer. Trust me, there will be a photo. Until then, stay safe and have a great holiday.

Weltanschauung

2011-07-03T08:58:00.002-05:00

Generally if I don't know what a word means I'll read it in context and see if I can figure it out from there. I'm not a huge "let's go to the dictionary" person, although that would certainly increase my vocabulary. I can sometimes figure out the latin roots of a word and that will help me understand it, but I'm not likely to spend a ton of time digging. English would be a far easier language if I learned Latin.

But this past week a German word sent me to the dictionary. Weltanschauung appeared in a book I was reading and I marked it with a book dart to research. See even then I don't go to the dictionary right away. I did after I finished the book though. Weltanschauung translates to "world wide view". It is the fundamental way that we view everything that happens in the world. For the last couple days I've been trying to figure out my weltanschauung. I suspect I'm a glass half empty kind of person but I'm not sure I want to see myself that way.

Publicly I tend to be a very optimistic person. I've had people tell me that I'm one of the more positive people they've met. And most of the time I do believe that things will work out for the best. But privately I'm a worrier (I get that from my mother). I waste a significant amount of time worrying about things that most likely will never happen. And in those moments I'm certainly not "the glass is half-full" type.

The author I was reading mentioned that his weltanschauung was that people were essentially good and that each day had a chance to be amazing. I will agree that I believe each day has the possibility to be great. The dawn offers a chance to change my life and change the world. But somewhere deep there is a worry. I appreciate all of the kindness I see around me. I believe that many people are like me, wanting to do good. I believe that there is more human goodness than badness. But there is still a part of me that watches and sees a breakdown of civility. Or a general indifference that nags at me. I can't read the news without testing my faith in human goodness. And when it comes to the animal issues that I'm so passionate about I become a complete pessimist.

Perhaps I'm oversimplifying a very complex weltanschauung. I do believe in human goodness. And most of the time I believe that we are heading in the right direction. I see little random acts of kindness all around me. I see friends who have other's best interests at heart. I believe that it is possible to make a difference (most days, don't catch me on my bad days). And when it comes down to it I don't know if anyone could say that they have a straight forward weltanschauung. We all have little half-empty, half-full sides of ourselves. Or maybe that's just me. And that's okay too.

Ear Worms

2011-07-02T14:06:00.003-05:00

I've had a song stuck in my head since May. It's actually starting to drive me crazy. When I start to sing anything, it's always this song. I can't even think of a different one. And I sing all the time. I mean all the time. I sing in the shower. I sing while I'm doing dishes. I sing as I walk down the street. I even sing at work. I'm sure I drive my coworkers insane. Not loud. Just singing under my breath. And for the last month it's been this one song. So in an attempt to rid myself of it, I'm posting it here. Nothing else is working. It's a great song but...really...a month!

Damn you Joe Purdy for writing such fantastic lyrics!

Joe Purdy's The Pretenders (the link is just set to the album. You'll have to select the song.

Out of a Forest

2011-06-14T20:37:00.005-05:00

Out of a Forest

I have no idea if I've shared this animated video before. If I have, I apologize. I just love it too much not to share. This is Out of a Forest, the bachelor film from Tobias Gundorff Boesen. The song is Slow Show by The National, a haunting song that gets in your head and stays there. The animation is so incredible that I go back again and again to watch it. I'm in love with the style. This film made me a fan of The National, made me buy this song, and made me watch this little scene over and over. Tobias just recently created a blog and it looks like he's sharing a bunch of other work. I'm excited to see his other films.

Warning: This video might be a tad too scary/sad for small children or the sensitive. Like me. But I still love it.

Plunderers

2011-06-13T19:08:00.004-05:00

I woke at 4 am this morning. With the windows open any outdoor noise wakes me up, although I don't think that's what got me. I woke from a horrible nightmare with a start and then, only then, did I notice the odd thunking sound. It sounded like someone pounding on my fence. I stood up and glanced out the window to see plunderers attacking my bird feeder. Two raccoons decided to make a feast of my seed and were practically pulling the feeder off the shepard's hook. I hissed at them from the upstairs window but they didn't even bother to look up. I woke Jeff up who had the idea of going downstairs and trying to scare them away from there. He flipped the light on and off, opened and slammed the door and the bigger one didn't even bother to jump off the fence. It was only when he went outside (not ten feet from them) that they scurried away. But they were back within seconds. He finally went out and collected the feeder before they went away.

It was eerie, standing there watching them. They don't seem mammalian. Or at least not the type that I'm used to. And they were big. Bigger than I expected. I've only had one other run in with a raccoon before and that was way too close for comfort. I didn't get a good look at its body as I backed away hurriedly from the bushes it had been hiding in. I just remember screaming. Raccoons will not hesitate to go for the eyes if they feel threatened. So I had forbidden Jeff to go outside last night. He didn't listen and I'm very thankful. They would have easily ripped the hook down (it was loose this morning) and destroyed my feeder. The cat, wisely perhaps, chose to watch from the safety of the upstairs window. They easily had a good 20 pounds on her.

I tried to get pictures but none turned out. If I had been thinking (it was 4 after all) I would have just turned on the light and clicked away. Instead I tried to get shots with and without the flash, none of which turned out. After the feeder was in we went back to bed, only to be woken twenty minutes later by a woodpecker who was trying to break through my neighbor's metal gutters. It's become a daily habit with the stupid bird. I hiss at him and he goes away but is normally back within half an hour to try again. I'm not sure how well his tiny little brain is working. Or mine. I'm beginning to think that the feeder might not be such a good idea.

Folds

2011-06-09T19:38:00.004-05:00

It's been quite a while since I last wrote about an artist I'm interested in. That used to be a weekly feature but since I've been posting only twice a week or so I've been cutting them out. So today I thought I'd share the utterly amazing work of Simon Schubert.

I found Simon's work through Lines and Colors, a blog that I have been in love with ever since I found it. Simon works in the medium of paper. Or more to the point he folds paper. He creases, he smoothes, and he creates intricate architectural masterpieces on single sheets of paper. There are no lines drawn on the paper above. That is all shadow and fold.

I love how he creates these architectural scenes that are all so structured yet he's also playing with perspective. They look vaguely 3-D. It's breathtaking in it's construction and elegance. They look so much like drawings, yet the are done one painstaking crease at a time. I wonder how long they take to created. And how often he has to take a step back to look at the full sheet. He manages to make a very simple medium, incredibly complex. If I haven't mentioned it, I'm in awe of this man's work.

Simon also does sculpture although I would say that it is not for everyone's taste. His sculpture has an interesting mix of disturbing and intriguing though. It's the kind of thing that I want to examine closer but I know I'll have nightmares later. If you like oddly creepy sculpture check it out. Otherwise, you need to see the rest of his elegant paperwork at his website above.

Down Memory Lane

2011-06-06T19:41:00.004-05:00

I received an email this past week from a good friend of mine in high school. She had managed to track me down using the marvels of Google and had taken the chance to email me. To make this feat a bit more amazing I've undergone a name change (last name and nickname) and my friend lives in Japan. I was a bit shocked that she found me and even more excited that she remembered me.

This friend was an exchange student from Japan and we became good friends almost instantly. I have some fantastic memories of the time we spent together. But I didn't remember everything. When she sent me a second email and mentioned some of her memories, it sent me scrambling back to my old yearbooks. There were things I had forgotten. So for the last two days I've been looking back at old pictures and reliving my high school years. I'm shocked at how porous my memories of that time have become (then again it was 16 years ago). I feel a bit old lately.

I was not a particularly popular kid in high school but I had a couple of good friends. I am remembering lunches spent with a candy bar and a notebook. The faculty trusted me enough that if they caught me out of the lunch room and in the building they left me alone. I'm remembering awesome days listening to 8 Tracks in the Journalism Room while laying out a newspaper. I'm remembering driving friends home and to events (I was one of the early ones with a car). I remember the hallways and the choir common room where I spent a ton of my free time watching MTV. Mostly I've been remembering friends who I haven't thought about in a long time.

The city recently remodeled the high school and it looks nothing like the school I went to almost two decades ago. The last time I drove by I didn't even recognize that it was the same school. And in a way that makes me sad. I realize that probably very few of my favorite teachers are still there, but I kind of want the halls to look the same.

It's been a bittersweet couple of days. I've been reminded of some of the amazing times I had in high school. I've been remembering old friends and old teachers. I've been reminded a bit of that passionate youth I used to be. And at the same time I'm reminded that I've gotten older and that nothing has stayed the same. But I have to thank Fumiko. I would never have gone back to those old yearbooks. And for that doumo arigatou gozaimasu.

Nerd Strong

2011-06-04T21:17:00.007-05:00

I've read Doonesbury for years. I love both Trudeau's characters and his great political satire. I've saved a couple of the good ones over the years and bought a couple of the books, but there's one that's tacked up on my bulletin board at my desk and I thought it was finally time to share it.

I'm a nerd, a geek, an oddball. I've been so all my life. In middle school I was called every name in the book. By high school I worried a lot less about the names. I was just happy doing my own thing. By college I was comfortable enough with my oddness, and now I downright embrace it. One of my coworkers this week called me a "super crazy geek" and I took it as a compliment. I have no idea if he meant it as a compliment (I actually think so) but that's how I'm going to take it. I'm a bit different. And I'm not worried about that.

So this comic strip about Nerd Strong resonated with me. I've started using the phrase myself. I'm impervious to insults. I'm comfortable being called a geek or nerd. I revel in my oddness. I find myself hanging out mostly with geeks and nerds. I find it makes life more interesting. And I think most adult geeks do the same. I think deep down we're all a little odd. It's just a matter of how much we let it show.

P.S. If the image is too small to read, you can always find the original here.

I'm Late, I'm Late

2011-06-01T21:44:00.004-05:00

The White Rabbit by Sir. John Tenniel

I'm a huge Alice in Wonderland fan. I've read the books a couple dozen times and wrote a post about the Annotated Alice which Keith (one of my wonderful readers) had recommended. So I could think of nothing better to kick off this post than the white rabbit's mantra. I'm so late at getting posts out that it's not funny. I'm falling behind. I keep worrying that my posts aren't perfect so I don't post a damn thing.

So today that changes. I'm going to post crap some days. Be warned. These last three weeks I haven't posted because I am feverishly reading children's books and young adult novels. Several years ago my mother purchased the book 1001 Children's Books that You Must Read Before You Grow Up. So I'm trying to read them. So far I have about 200 under my belt. And I apparently want to finish the other 800 this week. I've made five trips to the library in the last two weeks. All of them (except one) have included more than a dozen books. I read a chapter book today.

Now I'm not likely to finish anytime soon. Many of the books are international stories that might be a bit tricky to find. But I'm going to try. I like having a goal. Even if it is a bit on the outrageous side. But I'm going to try not to let this take me away from everything else. "Everything in moderation." A lesson I still haven't learned. I'll keep you posted.

PS. If you haven't managed to read Lewis Carroll's brilliant but odd Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, you need to find a copy. Start tonight. Then let me know what you think.

Joe Purdy

2011-05-18T22:09:00.006-05:00

Two weeks ago was my older sister's birthday. I was wracking by brain for an appropriate gift for her, when fate (or a fortuitous email) let me know that Joe Purdy would be playing in Des Moines. I found Joe years ago and have managed to hook almost everyone on his music. Including my sister. So I ran out the very next day and bought four tickets. Three for her...one for me. And I don't remember the last time a present worked so well in my favor. Or hers. She was a bit excited.

The concert was this past Sunday. Joe was playing down at the Vaudeville Mews, a tiny little theater right off Court Avenue. My older sister, her fiancee, my younger sister, her boyfriend, and Jeff and I met downtown for dinner early Sunday night. I've been wanting to try this odd pizza place called Fong's Pizza. We started with a drink at the Royal Mile and when our table was ready headed over to Fong's for some interesting pizza combinations. And it was tasty. Then my sisters, my older sister's fiancee, and I headed across the street to the Mews.

The Vaudeville Mews is so small that we were easily within a couple feet of the stage. I spent the entire concert with only three people between me and the performers. I love tiny venues. The show was opened by The Milk Carton Kids who were quite good. They not only opened the show but they ended up playing most of the night with Joe as well.

Joe Purdy is an indie artist that I would say is a cross between folk and country. He's even got a touch of blues mixed in. He doesn't have a publicist or a producer. He doesn't have any real marketing or a record contract. He self releases all of his albums and his fame gets around by word of mouth. And judging from the number of people at the concert, it's getting around quite well. We met one of my friends there who is also a big fan although I didn't introduce her. He's starting to develop a following, and with good reason. He's that good. Although his songs being chosen as a theme song for the show Lost and for various commercials doesn't hurt though.

Joe writes the kind of lyrics that I wish I'd written. They are sad but touching. And his music is just the right mix of blues and folk. If you haven't been introduced to his music there's an easy way to listen. Head over to his website. He puts the full songs on his site for free. I've listened to most of his music there. And then bought more than my fair share. I'd start with anything from Julie Blue or The City from Only Four Seasons. My current favorite song of his is Secret from You Can Tell Georgia. But so far I haven't found a song of his that I don't like. I've already bought his new album. And he has quite a few albums to choose from. I know I'm biased but I'd say that he is well worth a listen. And was well worth the concert tickets. It was a great evening.

Nephew

2011-05-17T19:36:00.004-05:00

This is Callen. This is my new nephew who was born just yesterday. Isn't he adorable? I'm incredibly lucky to be aunt to four nephews and two nieces by blood all of which I am completely in love with. I'm a godmother to several children. I have friend's children who I adore. And I get to spoil them all rotten and send them home to their parents. How lucky am I?

As I mentioned this little one was born yesterday to my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, and I can't wait to meet him. Mom and baby are doing well. Jeff and I are planning to hit the road and visit them very shortly. I'll keep you posted.