verbatim

Kid Updates, Briefly

Steph got a job as a junior counselor at a local day camp for the summer! She will be with the 4-year-olds, which was her first pick. The only problem is that counselor orientation is June 19–21, and then camp starts June 24. And ... because of all the snow days we've had (yet another just last week), school won't get out until June 26! We are hoping that she'll be able to arrange to take her finals early. She's not the only one in this predicament. In fact, plenty of Pete's friends who are going to sleepaway camp are going to miss their 8th grade graduation ceremony. Stay tuned....

Pete is done with basketball, has already started the spring track season, and will begin soccer this Sunday. Cue endless loads of laundry and nonstop carpooling.... A few weeks ago he went on the 8th grade winter retreat to Sargent Camp for three days, which was a great experience. The first group was up there in 2.5 feet of snow, the second group had a full day of rain, and his group lucked out with cold but dry weather. I knew they would be outside all day every day regardless of weather, so I was a happy mama when I read the weather forecast each morning. And they all had a blast. One of the best parts is that the teachers go, too, so the kids get to see what their teachers are like outside of the classroom—turns out they're all pretty "chill."

Julie had the first of her two All-City Band concerts. Every year they visit two elementary schools; with 15 schools in our fair city, each school gets visited only every 7 years or so. So she was delighted to learn that she'd be playing at her own school, plus another! She was really proud to perform for all her friends and teachers, and then it was exciting to visit another school and play for the audience there. I snuck in to the show at our school and came away thoroughly impressed. The big evening concert for parents is in a couple of weeks. Julie also had her last-ever city spelling bee (wah!). The word she got out on was TASSEL, which she not surprisingly guessed as TASSLE (à la HASSLE). Ah well!

Wild Geese That Fly with the Moon on Their Wings

It's been a while since I posted a compendium of my "favorite things," so here goes:

Marching infants!

Extreme prenatal genetic testing

Massachusetts is having a very Massachusetts fight over its official state rock song. (I'm firmly in the "Roadrunner" camp, in case you were curious.)

From The Onion: Pretty Cute Watching Boston Residents Play Daily Game of "Big City"

How a Book Is Born

Wow, there are really are 50 shades of gray!

Here's something to add to your Google Reader (that is, until July, when Google Reader will be gone and we'll all have to find an RSS aggregator from a more reliable company): National Geographic has starting posting random "found" photos from their archives. Here, for example, are the captions from three recent (lovely) photos:

• "A Burchell’s zebra at rest in the African terrain. From a March 1909 article about President Theodore Roosevelt’s upcoming hunting trip to Kenya." 
• "Shan man and two priests prepare to set off bamboo rockets in rain, Myanmar, November 1931."
• "A milkman and his terrier pose at the back of a milk truck, May 1948."

Two Movies in the Meantime

At some point during The Time When I Was Too Busy to Blog, I did manage to watch two movies with my kids.

First, we all watched Moneyball. So, you got yer baseball, and you got yer Brad Pitt. To which I say, "What could be bad?" And I'm right. This is a really good movie, retelling the tale of Billy Beane, who managed to put together a winning team for Oakland without throwing around tons of cash. I also liked Jonah Hill as the stats guy who is sort of like Nate Silver. The whole thing just plain works, and if you are a baseball fan, whether you remember every minute of the story from real life (Andy) or have never heard a word of it (the kids) or are somewhere in the middle (me), you will enjoy it.

Then Andy and I watched Argo with Pete. All thumbs up here, too, and again, whether you remember the actual events (Andy and I) or have no clue (Pete), this is riveting. Obviously no one knew the whole story about the concocted filmmaking plot until this movie came out (and, yes, I'm aware that more than a few liberties were taken with the actual story), but we all knew about the Americans hiding out in Iran. The era was recreated perfectly, from the music to the cars to the clothing and facial hair, and I really liked Ben Affleck in this. As far as the R rating goes, I had no problem letting Pete watch—there was some bad language and a few images of hostage situations, but overall nothing offensive that wasn't worth the price of admission in terms of a really good story. Oh, and it was such a pleasure to see Alan Arkin back on the big screen!

Deadlines: Made 'em!

I'm back! As any freelancer knows, you take work when it comes, and sometimes it all comes at once. And sometimes, despite careful scheduling, one project comes later than expected and/or is needed back earlier than expected, and then the same thing happens with another project ... and before I know it, all my time-budgeting has gone out the window. (As hard as that is, it's obviously still way better than when there's no work at all. I haven't had a dry patch to speak of in a few years, but it's very worrisome when that happens.)

Although my specialty area for copyediting is cookbooks, I still do lots and lots of other types of books, and I've done quite a few parenting books. This latest project was near and dear to my heart, as it was a complete overhaul of a classic: The Pregnancy Book by William Sears. In those years when I was busy being pregnant and taking cares of babies and toddlers, the many books in the Sears Parenting Library were cherished and trusted companions. I'm sure I still have a box of Sears books up in the attic somewhere. So, getting to work on this revision was an honor and a real treat. 

But ... at the same time that I agreed to do that big job, I got an offer from a brand-new client for an exciting cookbook project! On the exact same schedule! When they said it was a vegan cookbook, I thought to myself, "Oh, I've done those before," but this one is nothing like those other books. Vedge is the cookbook from the restaurant of the same name in Philly. I had never heard of it, but as is so often the case, as soon as I did hear of it I couldn't stop hearing about it. I don't read GQ, but this month's issue, for instance, has their picks for the country's 12 Most Outstanding Restaurants, and the restaurant in the #3 spot is Vedge. And note that it isn't the 12 Most Outstanding Vegan Restaurants—no, Vedge beat out all of those omnivore places too! At Vedge they're all about taking the most exquisite local produce available and maximizing the natural flavors and textures but with interesting techniques and additional flavor enhancers. The recipes in the book are all doable in a regular home kitchen—no sous-vide machine or brick pizza oven needed—but the results are extraordinary. I'm not surprised to hear that many omnivores go into Vedge not expecting to be satisfied and walk out forgetting that they didn't see a single animal product all evening.

So, both projects are done (which is more than I can say for all the stuff around the house that I've been neglecting for 3 weeks), and I just have one little thing on my desk. I hope to be back to blogging a bit more regularly now.

Postcard from the Comma Mines

Hi everyone,

I have a million tiny things to tell you (no, nothing earth-shattering) but am instead killing myself to make two—count 'em, two!—big deadlines on Monday.

See you on Tuesday!

Love and miss you,

Karen

Book Group

Last night we met to talk about The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. This is a long and dense novel, written in a very flowery, old-fashioned style (I'm assuming that the translator was true to the original in this respect). Here's the description from Amazon: 

Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julián Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets—an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.

The feel of postwar Spain is convincingly conveyed, and the characters are very real and very interesting. The plot takes a million little twists and turns, which made me want to keep reading despite the fact that I found it to be really too long and drawn out and just plain "overwritten." It reminded me a lot of The Name of the Rose, with its many mysterious characters and seemingly supernatural events and intricate plot, but it wasn't as much work to get through.

I did end up liking this book, but I don't know exactly what type of reader I'd recommend it to—it's too florid and romantic for someone who likes their mysteries on the gritty side, yet there is enough eerie and violent content to turn off anyone who's looking for a light escape. If you've read it, what did you think?

Also: We haven't yet picked a book for next month's meeting—got any suggestions for us?

Family Photos

I don't think I had a chance to mention that Andy's sister Jo has been in from London for a few weeks—visiting all of us and her son Al, who is at Berklee. This past weekend was Barbara's birthday (a BIG one), and as a surprise, Lily flew in from London too! Barbara was absolutely floored. Here are some photos from the birthday dinner at Legal's:

Just the girls:

Just the boys:

The whole family:

You may have noticed that Julie is not wearing her glasses—yes, she finally got contacts! That was the first time she wore them out of the house. She is so thrilled. The first time she showered with them, she was in there a very long time. I finally asked what was going on, and she said that she could never see anything in there before so she was taking the time to read all the shampoo bottle labels! Here are her before and after shots:

And that brings me to another question: After all these years, is it time for me to change the avatar photo I've been using on this blog, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, etc.? I still like it, but it is years old. I was thinking of this:

Or should I stick with the black and white sideways-looking one we're all so familiar with? This one is kind of dark, but at least my eyes are open—a rarity when I'm photographed. Please vote in the comments or via email or Facebook or Twitter or voice mail or text message or letter or telegram or smoke signal or horse-hoof stomp:

1. Keep the old one.

2. Switch to this one.

3. Switch, but not to this one.

Thanks!