verbatim

Spring Collection

Julie looks positively vernal in this ensemble! Here she pairs metallic silver vine-patterned slacks with a deep rose-hued Gap T-shirt, featuring glittery flowers and vines. She sports pink and red striped socks and translucent plastic mules with pink heels. About her neck a white feather boa is casually draped, and just a hint of her pink sparkly butterfly wings can be glimpsed in back. To cap off this playful look, she adds a black cat mask with white whiskers. Thank you, Julie!

(I have to tell you that this is nothing. Julie regularly leaves the room and comes back moments later wearing a surprising variety of clothes and accessories. Usually there's quite a bit of costume jewelry involved too, but not today. I'm so used to it that it rarely occurs to me to grab the camera, but this time I did.)

Panty Raid

I can't help noticing that my cleaning lady doesn't do a very good job anymore. Before she comes, I might catch sight of dust bunnies or pieces of toys or stray Froot Loops somewhere, and they're still there after she leaves. She never wipes out my refrigerator shelves anymore. Corners, baseboards, doors, etc.—ignored. Trash sometimes taken out, sometimes not. But of course I can't say anything to her or fire her, so I have to wait until she dies. She's only 50. Sigh.

So imagine my surprise when I went to get dressed today and discovered that she had found time yesterday to organize my underwear drawer! I didn't even know she knew where my underwear drawer was, let alone cared about how it looked! She wrapped every single pair into a tiny little envelope-like bundle, then arranged them in rows, all by color! Black over here, pink in the middle, tan over there, etc.

Yes, I took a photo. No, you can't see it.

Fun with Google Maps

I was daydreaming about leaving Boston and going to London, and the folks at Google maps gave me a good chuckle (check out step #9):

The rest is pretty easy, comparatively; I just can't figure out why they're making me detour through France....

Friday iPod Random Ten

1. Imagination - Harry Connick, Jr.
2. Don't Make Promises - Paul Weller
3. She's Going - English Beat
4. Tower of Song - Leonard Cohen
5. My Old Kentucky Home, Goodnight - John Prine
6. Sinner's Prayer - Ray Charles & B.B. King
7. I'm Tore Down - Eric Clapton
8. Foolish Love - Rufus Wainwright
9. Lively Up Yourself - Bob Marley & The Wailers
10. I've Been to Memphis  (live) - Lyle Lovett

Photo Op

Check out this slideshow of George Lange's photography. I don't think you'll lose interest, but if you do, stick with it because Clive Owen shows up near the end. Mmm, Clive Owen....

Movies

1. "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" - More of the same, yada yada yada. (Sorry, I'm just not a True Believer. I watch the movies and enjoy them well enough, but that's the extent of it.)

2. "A Love Song for Bobby Long" - This movie would have been nothing without John Travolta. (And even with him, it was almost nothing.) If someone doesn't know what "screen presence" is, I just point to Travolta. His charisma fills the screen for me, every time. He plays an alcoholic former literature professor, living (sort of) in New Orleans with his alcoholic protégé, played by someone I'd never seen before but hope to see again, Gabriel Macht. He had a certain quality about him that reminded me of Peter Strauss, but he's more handsome. Scarlett Johansson, meanwhile, continues to underwhelm as the newcomer to New Orleans. I haven't liked her since her mainly-silent role in "Girl with a Pearl Earring." Once she starts talking, I lose interest. I know Woody Allen's all giddy about her, but I just don't see much acting ability shining through. So, I can't say that anyone needs to see this movie, but it wasn't a waste of time. It's slow, and it's pretty clear what's going to happen throughout, but there's something tantalizing about watching these people drink themselves to death all while quoting great literature.

3. "Blood Diamond" - I was once again very impressed with Leo DiCaprio's transformation into an adult—both his acting and his appearance continue to improve. Here he plays an African diamond smuggler, amid the terrifyingly violent and gory rebel-fighting in Sierra Leone. It's pretty much a stock role, as is Jennifer Connelly's hot-shot international journalist with a heart, but it works because of the story and the setting. It's really a fascinating story, and eye-opening too: It makes you think about how many lives were lost for every diamond you see in every jewelry store window. But if you don't do bloody violence, you'll want to pass on this. There are some really upsetting scenes of whole villages being machine-gunned down. Oh, and you'll all be happy to know that I was pretty pleased with Leo's faux African accent, although I certainly can't claim to be as much of an expert judge as I am with faux Boston accents.

New Specs

We picked up Julie's new glasses today. It's a very strong prescription, so they had to grind them extra-thin, whatever that means (probably an extra $50). She was a teensy bit disoriented at first without the bifocals, but she seemed to adjust quickly. Then when we arrived at school and she hopped out of the car, she remarked with her characteristic good cheer, "The ground is lower now!" I alerted her teachers that she might be unsteady, but at pickup time they said she'd been fine. She did report that on the way out to the playground, she "saw more hills" than usual. (It's a completely flat parking lot. Sigh.) But she also noticed that she can no longer make herself see double (i.e., cross her eyes), which is a very good thing indeed.

Wiki Wednesday

Time to learn something!

1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. Click on "Random article" in the left-hand sidebar box.
3. Post it!

Here's what I got:

Cool Water was a famous song written in 1941 by the equally famous Bob Nolan. It is about a man and his mule, Dan, and a mirage in the desert.

Original version

The best-selling recorded version was done by Vaughn Monroe and The Sons of the Pioneers in 1948. The recording was released by RCA Victor Records as catalog number 20-2923. The record was on the Billboard magazine chart for 13 weeks beginning on August 6, 1948, peaking at #9.

Other artists

Frankie Laine and The Mellomen took it to #2 on the British charts in 1955.

Fleetwood Mac also covered this song in 1982 and was the B-side to the single "Gypsy".

Never heard of it—did you?

I'll Take Potpourri for $200, Alex

• I'm suddenly swamped with work! I got two–count 'em, two!—Italian projects and an American history project, all at the same time. Yikes.
• I think I have my Top Ten list done now. I'm just glancing at it every day or two to make sure I'm satisfied. Then I plan to write a brief explanation or argument for each entry, which ought to be downright torturous.
• One complaint about IKEA: Would it kill them to use the kinds of labels that peel easily off glassware? Goo-Gone, take me away!
• Piano? Still not tuned.
• Birth certificates? We had indeed put them in the safe-deposit box, so we wouldn't lose them. D'oh!

Pretty Mouth and PMS 370 My Eyes*

When I used to work in-house, we (meaning, the book editors and the book designers) spoke of PMS** colors all the time. I even knew some of them by heart (as in, "I thought these headings were supposed to be PMS 287 like the others!"). I don't know whether graphic designers still do that, or whether everything is done differently now that it's all digital. But I still love looking at those PMS charts. I just asked Andy to determine exactly what color my eyes are. I had thought maybe PMS 363, but he went with PMS 370. They do change a little every day, sometimes depending on what I'm wearing.

*Everyone get the reference?
**Pantone Matching System

Karen + NPR 4-Ever!

What a pleasure (and a relief!) to learn that I am not the only one who has crushes on all those faceless voices brought to us each day by NPR. I won't go as far as this person and suggest that I have sexual fantasies about Ira Glass (well, not every week, anyhow), but I most definitely have my favorites. Many years ago I went to a fundraiser for WBUR, our local NPR station. The event consisted of Terry Gross and Scott Simon sitting on a stage and interviewing each other! It was a wet dream for all of us NPR junkies in the audience.

I don't know what even half of the on-air personalities look like, but if you played me 100 different NPR voices saying "This is someone for NPR," I betcha I could identify all of them. And I'm not talking about the easy ones, like Carl Kassel, Corey Flintoff, Sylvia Poggioli, Robert Siegel, Susan Stamberg, etc. Puh-lease. I'm saying I could identify Joe Palca, Renee Montagne, Bob Mondello, Mara Liasson, Daniel Zwerdling, and so on. Here's a list of all of them, by the way—but be forewarned: Most of the links lead to photos, so don't click unless you really want to know what these people look like.

Reason #13688 to Have Cats

Nothing to blog about? No time to think of something witty and/or incisive? Shoot a few dozen shots of your favorite felines and post them instead!

Julie, Mr. Jones, and Mr. Jones's tummy:

Mr. Jones (and his tummy) lying on a blue carpet—or flying through a starlit sky, depending on how you look at it:

Mr. Jones and Grace having a cozy nap on Steph's bed:

Grace sitting on my lap all day, effectively blocking my view of my work:

But looking awfully cute:

All Charged Up

Although I've had my MacBook Pro since my birthday last April, I've never really used the battery. I might use it for a minute or two while I'm carrying the thing from the outlet in one room to the outlet in another room, but that's about it. But in the last month or so, I noticed that if I had it unplugged for more than 3–5 minutes, it would just die, with no warning. One minute I'd have a full charge, worth a good few hours anyhow, then nothing.

So I made my first-ever appointment for the Genius Bar at my local Apple store. I arrived at the prescribed time and fired up my MacBook for my assigned Genius. I was convinced that it wouldn't misbehave for him (like the car that refuses to make that clanging noise when you bring it to the mechanic), but sure enough, after a few minutes, it died. My Genius put a new battery in it and—lo and behold!—no problem. I asked whether it was likely that it had been a dud battery from the start, and I just didn't know because I never really gave it a chance, and he said probably. He was really nice and helpful, and he didn't even charge me! (Get it, he didn't charge me! It's battery humor. How often do you get to pull a joke like that?)

Julie...

1. recently announced, apropos of nothing, "I'm a wanted criminal."
2. sent Pete "into exile" today.
3. saw Dr. Bhatt yesterday, and will soon be trying out single-vision glasses (i.e., not bifocals) again! Dr. Bhatt noticed that she always tips her head back to look through the bottom portion of her glasses, even at a distance. (Which makes her look almost unbearably cute, but that's beside the point.) Also that when forced to look through the top portion, she crosses her eyes. So we're going to try her out with one prescription (the stronger one, from the bottom lenses) all the way through. Stay tuned....

Make Laughter for Glorious Home to Karen

Last night we finally saw "Borat"—or, more accurately, "Borat, Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan." This was one of the funniest movies I've seen in a very long time. Several times I had to press the "pause" button because I needed to wipe tears of laughter from my eyes. Yes, it's offensive—of course it's offensive—but it's so smart, so funny, so biting that it just works. Some of the scenes that involved real people unknowingly becoming part of the satire made me feel a little bad ... but not that bad, as it turned out. For the most part, those scenes were more successful than the set-up gags. Honestly, there were a few lines in particular that still have me giggling today. I think Sacha Baron Cohen must be something of a genius. He managed to skewer all of this country's worst kind of bigots while pretending to be one.

To add to the fun are all the cheesy effects and poorly translated subtitles, and even the DVD itself looks like this:

How great is that? A mock-pirated DVD. (Oh, and for the record: Taking photos of a DVD? Not so easy.)

Friday iPod Random Ten

1. Dirty Old Town - David Byrne
2. Luck in My Eyes - k.d. lang
3. Is That Love - Squeeze
4. Rollin' - Randy Newman
5. Back of My Mind - John Hiatt
6. London Calling - The Clash
7. Lipstick Vogue - Elvis Costello
8. Drivin' Wheel - Tom Rush
9. Pressure Drop - Toots and the Maytals
10. Deep Elem Blues - Grateful Dead

You Never Forget Your First Time

Today was a momentous day for me: I am no longer an IKEA virgin! Kathleen took me to the IKEA in Stoughton that opened last spring. Wowee, what a place. Now I know why people talk about it with such a starry-eyed look in their eyes. I bought dozens and dozens of things and still managed to spend only $100. Six little plastic bowls for $1.49! 100 tea lights for $2.99—and 6 little glass tealight holders for 50¢ each! A roll of leopard-print wrapping paper for $1.99! 200 multicolored elbow drinking straws for 99¢! Four tiny tempered glass prep bowls for $2.99! 100% cotton sheets for $2.99 each! And on and on and on. I wasn't looking for any big stuff, but we're doing some bedroom-switching-around this summer, so I'll be in the market for cheap kids' furniture then, and there's plenty to choose from. I love the way the whole place is laid out and designed; it could have been overwhelming and claustrophobic but was instead a delightful place to spend 4 hours with a friend.

Wiki Wednesday

Time to learn something!

1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. Click on "Random article" in the left-hand sidebar box.
3. Post it!

Here's mine for this week:

The Baconian method is the investigative method developed by Francis Bacon. It is an early forerunner of the scientific method. The method was put forward in Bacon's book Novum Organum, or 'New Instrument', and was supposed to replace the methods put forward in Aristotle's Organon.

The Baconian method consists of procedures for isolating the form nature, or cause, of a phenomenon, including the method of agreement, method of difference, and method of concomitant variation.

Bacon suggests that you draw up a list of all things in which the phenomenon you are trying to explain occurs, as well as a list of things in which it does not occur. Then you rank your lists according to the degree in which the phenomenon occurs in each one. Then you should be able to deduce what factors match the occurrence of the phenomenon in one list and don't occur in the other list, and also what factors change in accordance with the way the data had been ranked. From this Bacon concludes you should be able to deduce by elimination and inductive reasoning what is the cause underlying the phenomenon.

Thus, if an army is successful when commanded by Essex, and not successful when not commanded by Essex: and when it is more or less successful according to the degree of involvement of Essex as its commander, then it is scientifically reasonable to say that being commanded by Essex is causally related to the army's success.

Mmm, bacon....

The Greatest

I've put off my review of Cat Power's CD The Greatest because it seems to call for more analysis than I feel qualified to give it. Despite its title, it's not a greatest hits collection, but it is one of the greatest CDs I've listened to in ages. Every time one of the tracks pops up in my random iTunes shuffle, I stop in my tracks.

I had never heard of Cat Power (AKA Chan Marshall) until Mark clued me in; he knows a lot about music and picked this CD as his #1 of 2006, so that made enough of an impression on me that I bought it without ever having heard a single song from it. Lucky for me (and him!), it wasn't a mistake. (If you are not as brave as I am, you can download the title song for free at Salon; while you're there, read the review.)

So what is it about this CD that works for me? First and foremost, it's her voice. Lush, dreamy, experienced, pain-filled, intense. The voice of the girl you are so relieved you didn't have to room with in college, because who knows what might have happened. But you feel kind of cool that you lived down the hall and got to know her a little.

To tell you the truth, I haven't paid as much attention to the lyrics as I probably should; it's hard to explain why or how, but I seem to just focus on the sound of the music—both her voice and the band. For this CD she assembled an impressive group of Memphis sessions-work veterans who really make the most of her songs. Some of the lyrics I have caught seem pretty depressing—no big surprise after learning a bit about her—but I look forward to listening more closely and getting even more out of this knockout CD.

The End of the Innocence—Almost

Steph just said, "In the girls' bathroom, someone wrote the f-word, but they added -ing to it, which I totally don't get."

Gym Thoughts

I'm back to my thrice-weekly schedule at the gym, fearing and loathing every moment of it all the while. On Mondays I go to an hour-long "Club Strength" class where we lunge and squat while holding weights. On Tuesdays I wake up and, upon attempting to take that first step out of bed, fall to the floor whimpering. I spend the rest of the day cursing the instructor and life in general. On Wednesdays and Fridays I do the "Express Line," which is a series of machines designed to work all your major muscle groups in 22 minutes. (Funny, it never takes me that long....) Then I do a bunch of punishing ab exercises on the big red ball. Then I get on the elliptical trainer and do a 30-minute course with hills while listening to podcasts of all the NPR shows I've missed in the previous week. So if you see someone pedaling away while alternately giggling, weeping, and occasionally yelling out random words (sometimes I'm catching up on Will Shortz's Sunday Puzzle), that's me. I'm proud of myself every time I actually make it to the gym, because it goes against every instinct and desire in me.

So the first thing I'm noticing is that I'm getting slightly stronger and fitter and all that other good stuff. Blah blah blah.

The second thing is that, in addition to my friends that I run into on occasion there, I've started to make new friends. Gym friends! I can't believe I have gym friends. I haven't actually moved any of these friendships outside of the gym yet, but still. It's kind of fun and nice and exciting. Oh, and they don't know yet that I'm not a real gym person, so don't let on.

The third thing is that I'm still sussing out locker room etiquette. It wasn't immediately clear to me how much chatting can go on, particularly while people are in various states of dress and undress. Then there's the whole question of the various states of dress and undress themselves. Not surprisingly, it runs the gamut. There are women who get partially dressed in the shower stall, and there are those who stride around naked. Then, there's the woman I saw yesterday. She did the following:

1. showered with the shower curtain wide open
2. strode naked and soaking wet across the locker room
3. seized the communal blowdryer and proceeded to blowdry herself from head to toe, including putting one leg up on a bench and blowdrying her crotch for at least 1o minutes

It was positively stunning (and I mean that in the shocking way, as she was not even remotely attractive). I just can't imagine how someone can go so far outside of the largish realm of accepted normal behavior and not seem to care. Lord knows I'm not exactly a slavish follower of social and cultural mores, but let me just say that I'm glad I don't blowdry my hair because there's no way I'd touch that thing now.
 

Virtual Bumper Sticker

(thanks)

No Novel Here Either

Julie Q. (not to be confused with my own Julie Mae) has written a blog post that I was tempted to steal and pass off as my own, except that everyone would probably guess that I know shit about art history.

So, here is the reason Julie Q. will never write a novel. Oh, and me too.

OCMS

I'm still chipping away at all the music reviews I owe you, but I keep buying more music, so I make little progress. Right now I'm listening to Big Iron World from Old Crow Medicine Show, a band I first heard about on "All Things Considered." This is really old-timey-sounding music, and you know I love that in a CD, but I will say that this is almost too old-timey-sounding even for me. But it has enough of a modern edge that it just makes the cut.

The band consists of Willie Watson on vocals and guitar, Ketch Secor (How great is that name?) on vocals and harmonica, Critter Fuqua (Really!) on vocals and banjo, Kevin Hayes on guitjo, and Morgan Jahnig on upright bass. Plus, Gillian Welch shows up on a few tracks, which is not surprising considering that the CD is produced by her longtime partner David Rawlings. But what is surprising is that she plays drums! Yes, drums. I wonder if there's anything she can't do—and really well.

Anyhow, as with so many CDs I get these days, I don't really enjoy listening to the whole thing straight through, but whenever one track comes up on my random shuffle, I dig it. I'm starting to think that this is a statement about the iPod generation, rather than the CDs I buy. In the old days, you'd buy a record and listen to Side A straight through, then flip it and listen to Side B straight through, then flip it, over and over, while reading the liner notes in their entirety. (Then you'd realize that you were out of beer and hadn't gone to any classes all day...oops!) Then came CDs, and there was no flipping, and you could easily skip the songs you didn't like—and the liner notes were printed in 2-point type, so that ended that. Now, I load a new CD right into my iTunes and then my 'Pod and listen to it a few times maybe, but then just let shuffle take over. Which is neither here nor there, just something I've noticed about how I listen to music these days.

Just to make sure I do some more music reviews soon, I hereby promise to review Cat Power's CD The Greatest this week too.

Lists! Books! Lists of Books! A Book of Lists of Books! Heaven.

How great is it to receive a book in the mail unexpectedly? You're right, it's that great. No, BAFAB week isn't upon us yet (but here's a tease: I'll be doing a book giveaway contest this time around!), but I found a puffy package on my foyer floor today all the same. My former Wesleyan classmate Peder Zane sent me a copy of his new book, The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books. This is the kind of book that makes me want to send the kids off on extended playdates so I can get comfy and just slurp the entire thing down in one sitting.

Here's the deal: Peder contacted 125 of today's best-known and best-loved writers and asked them—or in some cases practically forced them, amid much wailing and gnashing of teeth, it seems—to come up with a list of their favorite ten books of all time. They're all here: Annie Proulx (favorite book: The Odyssey), Ann Patchett (Anna Karenina), Joyce Carol Oates (Crime and Punishment), Jonathan Franzen (The Brothers Karamazov), Jim Harrison (The Possessed), John Irving (Great Expectations), James Lee Burke (The Sound and the Fury), Lorrie Moore (Madame Bovary), Michael Cunningham (King Lear), Paul Auster (Don Quixote), and on and on and on. I feel as though I managed to wrangle an invitation to the coolest literary dinner party imaginable, and talk has turned to books.

The nerd in me appreciates the ranking system, which gives each #1 vote 10 points, each #2 vote 9 points, and so on, until we arrive at a list of the top 10 books according to all 125 of these writers:

1. Anna Karenina
2. Madame Bovary
3. War and Peace
4. Lolita
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
6. Hamlet
7. The Great Gatsby
8. In Search of Lost Time
9. The stories of Anton Chekhov
10. Middlemarch

Me, I've read all but War and Peace (which I suspect I never will read), Lolita (yes, yes, I promise to read it, you've all yelled at me enough about it already), and In Search of Lost Time (which I like to think I'll read someday, but don't hold your breath).

Then there are descriptions of all 544 books that appear on the 125 lists, plus a bunch of appealingly nerdy cross-lists, like Top Ten Works of the Twentieth Century and Top Ten Works by American Authors and so on. Really interesting.

Oh, and now Peder's got a blog! And you don't have to be a famous author, although there are plenty of those —even poor schlubs like me and you (well, most of you, anyhow) can play along. I'm already getting anxious; I don't know how I will ever come up with such a list. Books that were exquisitely written but not especially life-changing, or vice versa? Books that I loved as an adolescent but never read again? Oy, I'm getting a headache. One thing I know for sure: None of the books on the list above—with the possible exception of Huck Finn—would make my list. Nah, not even Huck Finn, come to think of it. How 'bout you? Can you do it?

So thanks, Peder. And kids? Get your own dinner. Mama's busy.

Food Photography 101

I received a great suggestion about my horrible food photography: Stop shooting every damn photo from a bird's-eye view. It seems so obvious now, but of course food doesn't look terribly appealing from that angle. So yesterday when I made Asparagus Pesto with Tiny Potatoes and Pasta for a party, I took this photo:

Isn't it gorgeous? Compare it to the overhead photo I took last year, and I think you'll agree that I'm on to something. Oh, and with spring threatening to appear one of these days, it's a perfect time to try this yummy recipe. I found a sack of those cute little rainbow-colored potatoes; they weren't exactly marble-sized, so I quartered them, and they looked very pretty.

Professor Plum in the Kitchen with the Farfalle

Please Me, Or Back Into That Little Red Envelope You Go

You might recall that sometime last year I declared independence from feeling obligated to watch every single Netflix movie we get in its entirety. (I've yet to assert myself so boldly in the realm of books; I still insist on finishing every book I start, regardless of how lousy it turns out to be.) Now I've become downright ruthless. Just last week I clicked off the TV halfway during three different movies:

Aborted movie the first: "Batman Begins" begins (you knew I'd do that, right?) OK, kind of dark and ninja-y. But then it gets boring, and Christian Bale does nothing for me. Click!

Aborted movie the second: Christian Bale continues to underwhelm in "The Prestige," which should have been great because we love magic, and Ricky Jay is even in it! Well, great it was surely not—rather, boring and hard to follow. Click!

Aborted movie the third: I really thought I'd be able to take "The Woodsman." And, you know what? I might have been able to, but I didn't want to. Nothing horrible actually happened (well, at least as far as I watched), but I didn't want to wait to see if something horrible would happen later. And, as Andy pointed out, even if nothing horrible did happen, that might suggest that Kevin Bacon's character is absolved, and I didn't want that either. Click!

Brief but Heavy Snowstorm

We did end up getting a good 6" or so of snow yesterday, which then changed to sleet overnight, so this morning everything was coated with ice. Last night there were a few monstrous avalanches off the roof that scared the crap out of me, but we didn't lose our power (or WiFi signal, even more importantly). The only casualty seems to have been Barbara and Jerry's flight home from their ski trip in Switzerland. If you have to be stranded somewhere, Zurich isn't so bad, but I can understand that they're ready to come home. Still no word on when they can get on a flight.

Guess What Sportscar I Am

I'm an Audi TT!

You're not the fastest, nor the most nimble, but you're cute and you have style.  You're not intensely competitive, but when you pass by, everyone turns to look.

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

Book Group

I know I stunned the nation (well, a teensy bit of it) the other day when I posted those shocking photos of my office. Well, brace yourselves for another jaw-dropping revelation: On Wednesday evening, for the first time in my life, I attended book group without having finished the book! Can you imagine? What won't I do next? Luckily Sheila and Janice didn't finish either, but still. Please don't think less of me.

I do intend to finish reading Them, Francine du Plessix Gray's memoir of her parents. It's just a bit long and plodding for me right now, with two big freelance projects looming over me and a bunch of kids nipping at my ankles. I've read lots of du Plessix Gray's work in The New Yorker over the years, and I was glad for the opportunity to get to know her. Her writing is exquisite but not easy; as captivating as I found the story, I couldn't read it for long stretches at a time. (That being said, Janet and Liz couldn't put it down and plowed right through it eagerly.) From what I did read, and from what the others said at the meeting, du Plessix Gray's life has been as exciting and troubling and fascinating and sad as most of ours are blissfully ordinary. Everyone in her family is artistic and famous and cosmopolitan; it sounds as though she never had a boring moment in her entire childhood. I recommend this book, particularly to those of you who enjoy memoirs and biographies.

Next up is The Accidental by Ali Smith. Which, I hereby vow, will be the last book I ever buy in hardcover and then fail to read until it comes out in paperback anyhow. (Yeah, right.)

No, Not Quite Spring Yet

Exhibit A (courtesy of the National Weather Service):

Exhibit B (the view out my back door):

Friday iPod Random Ten - Lyrics Quiz

We haven't done one of these in a while! See how many songs you can identify from their opening lines, and remember that Googling kills kittens. (Answers will appear in the Comments after you've all had a chance at it.)

1. When they kick at your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun?

2. I could while away the hours
Conferrin’ with the flowers
Consultin’ with the rain

3. Put on my blue suede shoes
And I boarded the plane
Touched down in the land of the delta blues
In the middle of the pouring rain

4. The first thing I remember, I was lying in my bed
I couldn't've been no more than one or two
And I remember there was a radio, coming from the room next door
And my mother laughed the way some ladies do

5. I been warped by the rain, driven by the snow
I'm drunk and dirty, don't you know

6. Sun's up, uh-huh, looks okay
The world survives into another day
And I'm thinking about eternity
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

7. Like a fool I went and stayed too long
Now I'm wondering if your love's still strong

8. Stop your messin' around
Better think of your future
Time you straighten right out
Creatin' problems in town

9. Way down here you need a reason to move
Feel a fool running your stateside games
Lose your load, leave your mind behind, baby James

10. When I get off of this mountain, you know where I want to go?
Straight down the Mississippi River, to the Gulf of Mexico
To Lake Charles, Louisiana, little Bessie, girl that I once knew
She told me just to come on by, if there's anything she could do

Beware...

...the brides of March!

...the tides of March!

...the guides of March!

...the slides of March!

...the rides of March!

...the strides of March!

...the hides of March!

Librarian Wanna-Be

My Thursday volunteer gig at the school library is such a source of satisfaction to me. All my nerdy little library science dreams come true there, like scanning bar codes on books, shelving—nay, reshelving!—books, replacing torn Dewey Decimal labels on book spines, and so on. I get such pleasure when a child approaches me about a particular book and I can locate it and check it out for him or her! Ah, bliss.

Today was particularly exciting because we are breaking in the new Web-based library software, so a whole 'nother set of my geeky fantasies were satisfied. But wait, it gets better! Someone—and no, I'm not naming names, do what you will, I won't tell—took a pile of books from the book drop and reshelved them without checking them in first! Ack! Smelling salts, please! But with the new software (and not a little grit and determination), my library colleagues and I were able to piece together the mystery and look up each child from the previous class to ascertain whether the books in question had been returned or not, then check them all back in. I love the new computer system. I want to marry it and have its babies.

Sharing the Coffee Love

Many of my favorite people in the world believe that coffee is the nectar of the gods, and it distresses them to no end that I can't stand the stuff. So today, in a show of java solidarity, I invite all you coffee lovers to have one on me at your local Starbucks. Well, it's not really on me, it's a Starbucks promotion, but you can still pretend I'm behind it all. I would if I could, you know that. Just head over to your local Starbucks (walking 100 yards in any direction from any spot in the country ought to do it) anytime from 10:00 to noon today for your free cup o' joe. I'll be waiting here, sipping my P.G. Tips and thinking about all of you.

Imagine These Photos Are Prettier

Today we're expecting temps to get up to 70°! It's sunny and gorgeous. Yesterday too, and I bought myself three bunches of daffodils to celebrate:

And, yes, I can hear you thinking out loud. Yes, there is something worse than my flower arranging. It's my photo composition, particularly of food. Last night I made a batch of applesauce that was so pretty I almost wept. But look how blah it looks here:

I never would have thought that food styling and photography were such mysterious arts. Sigh.

Wiki Wednesday

Time to learn something!

1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. Click on "Random article" in the left-hand sidebar box.
3. Post it!

Oowee, I got a grammar entry!

In English as in many other languages, the passive voice is the form of a transitive verb whose grammatical subject serves as the patient, receiving the action of the verb. The passive voice is typically contrasted with the active voice, which is the form of a transitive verb whose subject serves as the agent, performing the action of the verb. The subject of a verb in the passive voice corresponds to the object of the same verb in the active voice. English's passive voice is periphrastic; that is, it does not have a one-word form. Rather, it is formed using a form of the auxiliary verb be together with a verb's past participle.

'Course that means that I didn't really learn anything new today, but....

Time's Up

OK, I've given it three days now, and I've decided: I want my hour back. Not in 6 months. Now. Anyone else feeling more than usually tired with this early Daylight Saving Time change?

Best Bumper Sticker

Squeeze Me Again!

This just in:

Previously defunct British pop-rockers Squeeze have announced that they will reunite for a handful of UK shows come the end of this year, according to a statement posted on co-founder Glenn Tilbrook's home page. The band, who formally called it quits in 1999, haven't released a proper LP since 1998's Domino, but are planning to put out their latest greatest hits comp, The Essential Squeeze on April 30. The shows will coincide with Universal and Warner's reissue project of Squeeze's entire back catalogue.

Yee-ha! And, my darling Squeeze fans, please please please promise me that you'll (1) rent the DVD "Glen Tilbrook: One for the Road" if you haven't already, and (2) refrain from purchasing Chris Difford's CD "South East Side Story" if you haven't already. Trust me, on both counts.

A Spring in My Step

This Afternoon: Mostly cloudy, with a high near 59.

Wednesday: Partly cloudy, with a high near 67.

Picasso Painting or Cyborg?

Andy invites all PhotoShoppers to turn this PhotoBooth shot of me and Mr. Jones into a half-human/half-feline face:

Here's another, if that one isn't to your liking:

A Cluttered Office Is the Sign of a...Where's My Thesaurus Again?

I've been thinking about how my slippers could have gotten "lost" in my office for so long, and about how I have no idea where the kids' birth certificates are. I'm not sure, but I'm starting to think that there might be some clues to these—and maybe other!–mysteries in the following photos of my office.

Well, the desktop yields no big surprises: Everyone knows that two Macs are better than one:

But, when I, um, swivel my chair around, here's what greets me:

And if I extricate myself from the rubble, here's the view from the doorway:

Those banker's boxes? They're from when I left my job in 1995. They moved with me to this house, along with the larger boxes. I'll unpack them one of these days, I swear. And I'm sure I'll find all kinds of treasures*—but not the kids' birth certificates, because they were all born after these boxes were packed. Sigh.

*When the company was sold, the office-supply nerd in me helped myself to as many post-it notes and colored pencils as I could scurry away with. Oh, and lots of floppy disks–lotta good those did me....

Prolific, That's Me

Hey, I've just been listed as the 23rd most prolific in the entire blogosphere—or at least, 23rd out of all those who responded to a survey.... (Is it really that hard to find blogs with more than 1000 posts?)

Tag, You're It!

You may have noticed that I don't do Technorati tags or digg or anything like that here at verbatim. Partly because I'm so anal that I would feel the need to go back and assign tags to all my old posts from the past three years, which makes me want to crawl back into bed and pull the covers up over my head. Partly because I'm also so anal that I would make myself positively crazy thinking of all the possible tags I would need and whether any given post fit into multiple tag categories. And partly because I really have trouble believing that it would get me more of the kinds of readers I'm hoping to reach. Really, is a tag like "parenting" or "books" going to help someone find me? Maybe I'm way off, but I think that most people Google the specific things they're seeking, and I do get most of my new readers that way (as in, "Hey, I was looking for the lyrics to a John Hiatt song and found your blog. . . . I think I'll stick around!"). I'm also not really in this for the hit-counting; there's no question that I love when new readers find me, but I'm not trying to find every possible way to get out there. (All that being said, anyone who wants to give me some linky-love on their own blog is always greatly appreciated.)

But the concept of tags has gotten into my mind, and I realized that I categorize all the people in my life into tag groups. Whether they're NPR stories, blogs or other web sites, music/movie/book reviews, news stories, or whatever, I see something and immediately make a connection to my friends or family members who might be interested in it. The groups overlap; I might send a blurb about a new Jet Li movie to two different people and a great lamb recipe to two other people, but one person from each of those two pairs might also get a link to a "Fresh Air" show featuring Willie Nelson. I wonder if this is just because I'm an organization nerd who likes to sort and collate and group and put things away where they go, or does everyone think that way?

Belated

Hey, I missed my own blogiversary! This past Thursday marked three years that I've been doing this thing. And it's all for you, my dear readers, because otherwise I'd just keep it all on my hard drive, wouldn't I? Many thanks for visiting and for commenting, and please do keep coming by.

Public Service Announcement

Don't forget to make like a bunny and spring forward before you go to sleep tonight. Boing!

Would You Rather...?

I grew up in a game-playing family, from board games to card games to word games. We played Monopoloy and Clue and poker and gin rummy and hangman and jotto and everything else. Andy did too (although possibly to a lesser extent), so it's no surprise that we play a lot of games in our own family. Currently we all especially like Trouble, Sorry, Clue Jr., Uno, mancala, go fish, memory, bingo, and war.

We also play lots of "talking" games like 20 Questions, usually at the dinner table or in the car. Our favorite variation is Animal 20 Questions (Does it have fur? Does it swim? Does it live in the jungle?), and Julie and I frequently play Disney 20 Questions (Is it a ride we went on? Is it something we ate there? Is it a character we met?). But the game we play most often is "Would You Rather...?" which all started when Steph was dying to get her ears pierced. I asked her if she'd rather never get her ears pierced or have to kiss [insert name of truly repulsive boy in her class here] every day for 2 weeks. She sacrificed her lips for those earrings, which was as strong a commitment to that wish as I could imagine Now we all play. I nearly brought Andy to tears with "Would you rather never have coffee again or never have alcohol again?" (after much soul-searching, he chose no coffee, figuring he'd miss the flavor but he could get his caffeine elsewhere) and Pete gave him "Would you rather never have ketchup again or never have mustard again?" (he chose no mustard, although it greatly pained him to do so, because he could nearly always substitute ketchup or mayo for mustard, but there's really nothing you can sub for ketchup on something like fries).

Julie's still a little unclear on the concept, so she'll say something like, "Would you radder [sic] have no house or have no house and no clothes?" (Hmm, let me get back to you on that one.) But the other two get it, and we end up fielding questions about reading a book vs. watching a movie, pool vs. ocean, ice cream vs. brownies, and so on. Fun.

Out of the Frying Pan?

In February Ari Emanuel predicted that Condoleezza Rice would become VP before the end of Bush's reign of arrogance and irresponsibility. Now he's betting it'll happen in the next 3 weeks. What think you?