Pumpkin Carving

Chris took the digital camera with him to Shanghai (so I hope he posts a picture or two), which means any pictures I take this week will take awhile to make it onto this here blog. Principal among the pictures I would have posted today if I could have are shots of the pumpkins my friends and I carved last night.

This was my inspiration - I had only looked at the picture a couple times, so my version is decidedly less interesting. I really lost patience when I got to the eyes (I'd already spent too much time - in my opinion - carving out the teeth), so they were pretty lame. Still, the overall effect is great - and it was surprisingly easy to do. And someday, when I get my pictures developed, you'll get to see it.

Teabag Tag

Never be afraid to sit a while and think.
Lorraine Hansberry

No time to sit and think today... Unless it's about preparing for teaching. The dining room table is covered with Italian paperwork, and I'm crafting the term's schedule on the laptop. My type-A personality is quite satisfied to have all of this on paper rather than swimming around in my head... But I'm realizing that teaching is much, much more work than I'd anticipated. Kudos to all the teachers out there, you don't get nearly enough credit.

Is it raining in China?

Chris left for Shanghai on Thursday, and it's been raining pretty much ever since. I'm feeling overwhelmed by a neighborhood project, and I haven't heard back from the college folks about whether I can go back to teaching one class instead of two next term. And I woke up with a monster headache this morning. I think today is a good day to do nothing...

Preserving Oregon's Artistic Heritage

Last night I was in Salem for the premier of two films about two Oregon artists - Leroy Setziol and Jack McLarty - which are part of a larger project called Preservation of Oregon's Artistic Heritage. This project is my mother's brainchild - she's very proud of it, and I'm very proud of her.

The program is designed to capture the lives and the work of some of Oregon's best-known and most influential artists on film - and then to pair those films with curriculum pieces which teachers around the state (and elsewhere) can use in their classrooms to help bring art education back into the public schools.

But the curriculum is about more than just art - there are ways to include these films in many different subject areas, which really helps prove the point that art isn't just a superfluous and unnecessary thing. The curriculum pieces are all available on the website.

The films are available for purchase and one thing Mom encouraged people to do last night is either buy them for your kids' schools or talk to your PTA about doing so. They're $20 apiece, a nominal fee, and are a wonderful testimony to the importance of art in our lives.

Overwhelmed

I was already a little nervous about starting to teach Italian this winter. The term starts in early January, so I'm starting to do some prep work now (because my type-A personality pretty much demands it), and I sent an email to the folks at the community college about what day of the week my class will be. The response I got back yesterday caused my heart rate to increase dramatically.

They said I would be teaching not one, but two classes. That in and of itself might have been acceptable - a little more pocket money, a way to increase my comfort level more quickly - but it wasn't the number of classes but the level that freaked me out. They'd assigned me both a level one and a level two class. This after a comment during my interview that went something like, "Hmm, I'm not seeing any teaching or language items on your resume."

So, I get it. They're desperate for people to teach Italian. And I think, in a way, that's great - it means there are more people out there who are interested in learning a language. But I'm really, really, really not equipped to teach a level two class right now. A former teacher of mine (the one who get me into teaching) said, "Are you capable of teaching at level two? Absolutely. Should you stick to level one your first term to get your feet wet? Absolutely."

I emailed the college folks last night and said, "I hope it doesn't screw up your schedule too much, but please let me just do level one... Please..." The catalog hasn't gone to print yet, and nothing's even online, so I hope I caught it in time.

Now I can go back to just being a little nervous - but mostly really excited - about it.

My Squiggly Line

This past Sunday I spent a few hours at my alma mater for a department alumni event. They started holding these things several years ago, but I didn't go until last year. They're quite clever, actually, as the current crop of seniors comes and mingles with the alumni to discuss "life after college." I wish they'd held events like that when I was a senior.

I mean, back then I still had my whole life ahead of me. I hadn't made any job mistakes at that point - I still thought I might have something one might call a "career." Today, however...

But I digress. This year, the faculty had the brilliant idea of having the alumni create a timeline of what they've done since leaving college. Most of the alums were recent graduates, so they had a whopping year (or, in some cases, five months) in that so-called "real world." Unlike last year, however, I wasn't the oldest alum there - there were two gals who graduated five years before me.

Still, the post-college timeline felt like an exercise in torture.

I wrote out all the years since I graduated down one side of the butcher paper, and then just stared at a giant blank sheet upon which I was supposed to chart the past decade. I mean, how do you do that? The instructions said that if there were any years during which one was "drifting" to indicate that with a squiggly line. So what was my first move? A giant squiggly line from graduation day until the present - and beyond.

Sure, I've kept busy since graduation, but my life hasn't exactly been on any kind of track. I used to think I should want more, that I should want to do more. When I was in high school, everyone took typing classes and my mother specifically said, "No daughter of mine is going to be a secretary!" so I didn't have to take the class. And what have I done since graduating? Administrative work. For many years I was almost ashamed of that, again thinking that I should want more for myself - hell, my mother always did.

More recently, I had come to think that it doesn't matter what I do for a living - I'm happy. I like my job, I like my hobbies, I like my life. So why was that butcher paper so depressing? Because I'm looking at a job hunt coming down the pike in the next few months, and that brings up the question that apparently hasn't ever really gone away - what am I going to do with my life?

Still no answer.

Encounters of the Foodie Kind

On Friday night, Chris and I went to a small gathering of like-minded folks to listen to a public radio icon - especially to foodies - talk about balsamic vinegar. Lynne Rosetto Kasper, host of The Splendid Table, was in town for Portland's "Wild About Game" cooking contest - and since she's a public radio person, OPB snapped her up for some hob-nobbing with donors.

(I should note here that Chris and I do not contribute enough to public radio to warrant an invitation to such a small event. We give, to be sure, but we're not the big spenders. Chris' company, however, gives enough - and that's how we got the invite.)

We mingled and noshed on the appetizers available (from the fabulous folks at The Flaming Carrot Catering), sipped a little wine (courtesy of Sokol Blosser), and waited for the show to start. Kasper gave a brief talk about the way balsamic vinegar - once an unknown quantity outside the attics of the Italian families who made it - is made, and why the supermarket variety differs from the $200/bottle stuff.

The talk alone would have been great, but then she handed out plastic spoons and went around deposting drops of the $200/bottle vinegar on them! It was not like anything you'd call vinegar - it had the consistency of a fine molasses and tasted slightly tart, with a slightly almost lemony flavor. After we tasted two more variations on balsamic vinegar (the good Italian knockoff and the supermarket nastiness), we each received a small bowl containing a scoop of vanilla ice cream... Upon which Lynne plopped a few more drops of the costly nectar! Vinegar on ice cream? Absolutely! It was really a treat, especially considering it's unlikely we'll ever purchase vinegar of that quality ourselves, and Lynne was certainly not shy about sharing.

Afterwards, we chatted a bit with both Lynne and her producer, both of whom are truly delightful. (Her producer became my idol when, at one point, she said she used to work with Prince.) To say that Lynne is as warm in person as she sounds on the radio is an understatement. She autographed our stained copy of The Italian Country Table and posed for a picture with Chris. You might think she's blinking here, but I prefer to think of it as a really, really big smile.


The two chefs: Lynne Rosetto Kasper & Chris

Random 10

Haven't done this for awhile, and for some reason I feel inspired to play today.

1. Overjoyed - Stevie Wonder
2. A Change (Would Do You Good) - Sheryl Crow
3. Crying Shame - Jack Johnson
4. Mama's in the Moon - Marc Cohn
5. Your Body is a Wonderland - John Mayer
6. Stardate 1990 - Dan Reed Network
7. Amity Gardens - Fountains of Wayne
8. Bagus + These Guys Are Very Brilliant - Cesare Cremonini
9. World Outside Your Window - Tanita Tikaram
10. Saved By the Bell - The Bee Gees

Have a good weekend, all.

Oh, Such Fun

Record Store Geek has posted this list of the Top 100 toys of the 70's and 80's. I'm not sure if I feel nostalgic or just old, but either way it's fun.

This Week in Pictures

Since I lived in New Hampshire and Connecticut for many years, I know from fall color... And while what we get here in the Pacific Northwest clearly pales in comparison to New England's display, we get to enjoy a bit of color here - at least before the hard rains start and knock all the leaves off the trees. These are from a tree near our mailbox, and I'm not sure which I like better - the one with the flash or without. Reality is, of course, somewhere in between.


(L) With flash, and (R) without.

Yesterday was my brother's birthday, and I met him and several others for a celebratory lunch. My mother debuted her Halloween costume for us. Lovely, isn't it? I think it really shows off her nurturing side.


(L) Mom; and (R) the rest of the celebrants - Brother Zachary, me, Birthday Brother Caleb, Caleb's girlfriend Enzi

Google Blog Search

I don't even remember how I stumbled upon this site, but I thought I'd share it with you as I've already found it invaluable.

The fine folks at Google (who, I'm pretty sure, are slowly taking over the world) have created a Blog Search tool. Whatever you're interested in, type it into the search field and voila! You now have a bunch of blogs writing about that very subject. Genius.

I'm putting a permanent link on the left-hand toolbar, just in case you decide you need it later.

Sheryl Crow Concert Review

Sheryl Crow
Theater of the Clouds, Portland OR
October 17, 2005

Sheryl Crow is one of those artists we’ve really liked since her first album. We’re not members of the fan club, nor do we haunt the website’s message boards, but we like her music. Until Monday night, however, we’d never managed to see her perform live.

Crow’s new album, “Wildflower,” is somewhat lighter fare than her previous efforts, and we had read that she was experimenting with a new kind of sound. She said she’d be hitting the road for a limited number of shows in select cities with not only her band but a small string section. We assumed that Portland wouldn’t be on that tour, and thought no more about it. When we returned from Europe last month, however, I happened to notice that she was coming through Portland on this mini-tour, so we scooped up a couple of tickets. We still don’t know how Portland got on the list, when most of the shows are in L.A. or New York, but I won’t dwell on looking that proverbial gift horse in the mouth.

The tickets said the show started at 8pm, and Chris had read something about there being no opening act and Crow typically takeing the stage right on time. We took our seats around 7:10 – we had allotted extra time in case we had to return to the car… I had stashed the digital camera in the bottom of my purse, relying on the strategically placed tampon near the top to deter any male purse-checker from wanting to dig deeper. It worked, which leaves me with mixed feelings – I’m glad I got the camera in (because, really, when you see these images you’ll see there’s no way I could make money with them anyway, so no harm is being done), but it makes me wonder what else people could sneak in? Best to not think about it much, methinks.

(As an aside, my smuggling reminded me of my “groupie” days in the late 80’s and early 90’s, when my friend Casey and I would sneak those old, skinny cameras – y’know, the ones that took the film that looked like two cylinders connected by a strip of plastic? – into concerts. We got very creative with how we’d hide them, and only got caught once. In our defense, we weren’t there to take pictures of the shows and sell them to rock magazines, we were there to get pictures of ourselves with the band members – which we did. I don’t open those photo albums often, as my hair and fashion choices back then still alarm me, but those were certainly some fun days. A friend of mine can’t get over the fact that my parents allowed me out of the house to attend rock concerts and hang out with the bands. I probably wouldn’t have allowed it, but I wasn’t the parent. Lucky for me.)

We had heard the Crow concert hadn’t sold out, but by the time the show started it seemed pretty full to us. One of the great things about Crow’s music is its wide-ranging appeal – we saw entire families there, and people ranging in age from under 10 to 60+. I’m so used to feeling old at concerts lately it was a refreshing change. This was one of those “sit-down” concerts, which I generally don’t like – I’m not a great dancer, nor do I relish the thought of the people behind me being subjected to my ill-conceived gyrations, but I also end up feeling cooped up in a seat when I really want to be moving (at least a little) to the music.

Crow took the stage at about 8:15, and performed a variety of old and new songs – the requisite singles were played, but so were some old gems from the first few albums. We were surprised that only two songs from the last album (“C’mon, C’mon”) made it into the set, but pleased at some of the other song choices. The set list was as follows:

Run Baby Run
Hard To Make a Stand
Maybe Angels
Good Is Good
Letter To God
Perfect Lie
Favorite Mistake
The First Cut is the Deepest (Cat Stevens cover)
Lifetimes
Live It Up
Strong Enough
Wildflower
If It Makes You Happy
It Don't Hurt
Always On Your Side
Where Has All The Love Gone
All I Wanna Do
A Change (Would Do You Good)

Encore #1:
Soak Up the Sun
Everyday is a Winding Road

Encore #2:
Safe and Sound
Levon (Elton John cover)

We assumed the string section would only play on the new songs, since those songs were written with an orchestra in mind, but they played for most of the show – they weren’t onstage during the first encore, and occasionally they’d just clap along during a song where they weren’t taking an active role, but for the most part they added a wonderful flavor to older songs (I particularly liked the somber note they struck in “Safe and Sound”). The conductor was dressed in a red shirt, red tie, jeans, tennis shoes and a black tux jacket complete with black sequins on the tails. Very rock and roll, methinks.


She performed the show opener, "Run Baby Run," without an instrument of her own. Some artists who are used to playing an instrument look awkward when they don't have it - she looked completely natural. She performed a couple other songs that night sans instrument.

The mix was spot-on – we didn’t even end up wearing earplugs (though we always carry them, and it’s a rare concert that doesn’t require their use, and you kids out there should protect your ears, etc. etc.). Crow’s voice soared above everything – we were able to hear just what a talented live performer she is and still hear what a fabulous band she has with her. She switches instruments frequently, easily swapping an acoustic for an electric guitar or electric bass (my favorite). She even hops up onto the piano for a few numbers. Her band mates are equally ambidextrous, as the keyboardist doubles as a backup bassist and the bassist doubles as a backup guitarist. To anyone watching that for kind of thing, it’s clear that her standards are high and the end result benefits greatly from the attention to detail.


Here you can see the string section on the riser in the back to the left of the picture. The piano was in the middle of the riser, then the drummer and the keyboards. There was a big plastic-looking partition between the piano and the drummer - we wondered if, perhaps, he was prone to spitting on Sheryl when she tickled the ivories. He seemed harmless enough to us (and, frankly, looked a bit from our vantage point like Peter Jackson).

Crow’s songs are mostly wonderful, and her voice is great on her recordings – but nothing prepared me for the vocal acrobatics she did live – she leapt right into things with a very riffy (vocally speaking) rendition “Run Baby Run” and never let up. She’s a much more talented singer than I think her recordings show, which can either be good (so that her fans have something more to look forward to when they see her live) or bad (why on earth would you let that go unrecorded?!?). Either way, it was a surprise – a very pleasant one – to hear her variations on her own songs, and the additions of the bluesy elements which are clearly near and dear to her heart.


For "Strong Enough" and "Wildflower," she sat in the center of the stage with a spotlight on her. There was a fiddle solo during which the starry light show swirled behind her - it looked fabulous.

It’s apparently the trend to have a large-screen video display behind bands these days. I have nothing against this, and in general I thought the things being projected behind Crow’s band were fine and didn’t detract from what was happening onstage – with one notable exception. Many of you will remember the ending to the “Faith No More” video where that goldfish flops around, essentially drowning in the air, on a tabletop. I couldn’t ever watch that part of the video, even if “no fish were harmed during the making of,” yadda, yadda, yadda. I can’t see how it’s not harmful – that’d be like submerging a human being in water and letting them freak out about dying and then pulling them to air just before it’s too late. How is that not harmful?!? You might say the fish isn’t capable of the “freak out” level of understanding what’s going on, but then you’d have to explain why it will flop around in a tortured effort to inhale something that isn’t air. (And you’d have a very hard time convincing me, anyway, so don’t bother.)

At any rate, I hated the end of that video, and was dismayed when a similar image appeared above Crow’s head during “Safe and Sound.” It was interspersed with images of war (she wrote the song shortly after 9/11), but for the most part I looked at the bottom of the stage – or at my knees – until the montage was over. I get how the idea of the image fits into the overall message, but I still didn’t like seeing it. I’ll give her credit – at least in her version of this awful imagery the fish is shown being dropped back into water at the end, happily still alive.


After the first couple songs, Crow announced that this was only the second stop on this tour, and that the first night (in Seattle) had gone so well they weren't sure how things would go in Portland. She said, "But I wore a dress, so even if things go terribly, there are still the legs." She changed into jeans and a tanktop before the encores, but kept the super-high heels - I am amazed she can stand in heels that high for that long and not lose all feeling in her toes. Of course, she might lose all feeling in her toes - I have no idea.

Readers of this blog will no doubt remember that we’re cycling fans, and Lance Armstrong fans in particular. When most people who know we’re cycling fans found out that Armstrong and Crow were dating, they’d ask us, “So, do you like Sheryl Crow now, too?” We both found the question a little silly, as if the relationship would make us like a musician we would ordinarily not like. The truth is that we liked both independently long before they knew each other, and the relationship doesn’t change our feelings about either of them… Except that I’m not-so-secretly hoping her politics influence his.

He was, as we expected, at the show. She was very public earlier in the year about saying that since she’d been with him at the Tour de France that she wanted him to go on tour with her – and when he brought her a guitar (and a smooch) just before “All I Wanna Do,” she joked, “He’s the most expensive guitar tech I’ve ever had!” She called him up again onstage during “Everyday is a Winding Road” for a little dance number (very cute), and alluded to him several times. Apparently she used to dedicate the song “Strong Enough” to “all the single men in the audience,” and this time she said, “But now…” The audience laughed and cheered as she started the song. (I love that song, and I love people in love, but even I find the line, “Are you strong enough to be my man?” a little on the oh-my-god-that’s-too-perfect-to-be-real side now, given her fiancé’s last name...)


These two shots are during the encores (note the wardrobe change), and the one on the right is the little dance she shared with her man...

Many of Crow’s songs are co-written with a guy named Jeff Trott, who she announced is a Portlander (we had no idea). She also said much of “C’mon, C’mon” was recorded in Portland (where were we?!?). So between those tidbits and Lance’s Nike and medical connections here, it’s likely this celebrity couple will return. And we can’t wait.

For another take on it, here’s The Oregonian’s review.

Hope Is...

Heard on the radio yesterday - a quote from Jim Wallis, who apparently said, "Hope is believing in spite of the evidence, and then watching the evidence change."

I like the idea, and I'm certainly prone to subscribing to lofty dream-statements like that whole-heartedly, but I have to say - I think this one is a stretch.

It seems to me that hope is, indeed, "believing in spite of the evidence," but that's where it ends. Because when you're hoping, you're also hoping that the evidence will change - but hope alone doesn't cause change. We can hope for something, but unless we act on that hope we are (to put it crudely) pissing into the wind.

Just my two cents.

High Water

It was a perfect weekend to be at the beach - nearly consistent rain and high wind warnings for two days meant there were very few good reasons to leave the comfort of the living room where the fire was blazing... And while it's true I didn't get as much sleep as I'd have liked, and I didn't accomplish as much cross-stitch as I was hoping to, it was still a wonderfully relaxing weekend and I'm glad we got away.


The beach house property's front yard ends at a small rocky bluff (about three feet tall) which leads to the beach on the Siletz Bay on the south end of Lincoln City. The Bay is obviously affected by the tides, which can make the water cover the beach area almost entirely. But I've never seen the water as high as it was on Saturday morning - and it stayed high for several hours. It was almost halfway up the rocky bluff.

Ducks Aren't Birds

Greyduck had an interesting conversation with a woman at a bus stop, and I'm thankful he decided to post it, as it's given me a reason to chuckle this morning.

Otherwise, it's not a great day so far.

After two nights of terrible sleep at the beach (which I expected), I was looking forward to returning to my familiar bed last night. So why did I have yet another terrible night's sleep? I have no idea. I can only partially blame the over-lovey cat, as there were plenty of times I was already awake when she began to pester me.

So, I am beginning what will be a very, very busy week on less than a full tank. Not good.

This morning I ended up spending some time cleaning up the kitchen, which I hadn't expected to need to do, after a minor disaster last night. We thought a dash of our homemade Limoncello would go nicely with the pear tart I'd made for dessert, but the bottle slipped and broke, spilling the lemon/grain alcohol/sugar/water mixture all over the counter and floor. Chris mopped the floor last night, and I thought we'd gotten the counter cleaned up... But apparently sugar water is akin to glue, as the floor remains everso slightly sticky and the counter is still uninhabitable. What I cleaned up this morning, however, was a place the Limoncello got that we hadn't even discovered last night - inside the silverware drawer. I emptied the contents and scrubbed it out, leaving it to air dry. We'll see if it's still sticky tonight.

Anyone know what might cut through sugar water best? Chris mopped with vinegar water last night, thinking that'd do the trick, but this stuff is stubborn. All suggestions are welcome. In the meantime, we're just pleased we don't have anyone coming over for dinner anytime soon.

Then I come to work, where I'm increasingly unhappy, and find that a bill I sent out last week (which was okayed by the person who needs to okay these things) was incorrect, and I not only have to redo it, I have to void some checks and refund money. It's small, I know, but in my current state of mind it feels big... And I really prefer these things when they work properly the first time.

The rest of this busy week - tonight, Sheryl Crow concert. Tomorrow, Italian class. Wednesday, dinner with dad. Friday, public radio event. Saturday, dinner with friends. Sunday, reunion event at my alma mater. Then I collapse.

Cafe du Monde

According to Ken Foster, New Orleans' legendary 24-hour beignet hotspot Cafe du Monde is set to reopen next Wednesday. If that's not a sign that the city's coming back, I don't know what is.

Beach Weekend

We're taking advantage of our last completely free weekend until late January (!!!) to hole up at the beach. I hear the weather's supposed to be terrible, which is perfect. A fire in the fireplace, my long-ignored cross-stitch, those books I've been wanting to start... I can't wait. No computer, no phones, just some much-needed forced relaxation. Which we'll both need, because the coming months will be hectic.

And these Sheryl Crow lyrics might be appropriate today for someone special:

Antigone laid across the road
And let a Mack truck leave her there for dead
Just because her lover split the scene
Well, love might be great, but why lose your head?

Well, it's laughter that comes up when I cry for you
And my heart may break again before it learns
And I might be stupid enough to want to fall again
Cause I've gotten used to the crash and burn

Hang in there.

Back to Shanghai

Chris returns to Shanghai later this month for his company's annual meeting, and will be gone for nine days. I'll have to be content reading this article, and hoping that he posts a bit while he's gone.

Easter Eggs

Some people like to hunt for those little treasures filmmakers hide on DVDs, commonly called "Easter Eggs." Some people - myself included - like the treasures but quickly grow tired of the actual hunting. This website is just for folks like me.

If you have a specific DVD you're interested in, type it into the "search" box at the top right of the page. Otherwise, you can scroll down to "Find Eggs" and look under the different categories. Since the last time I visited this site (at least a year), they seem to have expanded the definition of an "Easter Egg" to include things within the movies themselves - for instance, if the film editor's name gets used in the dialogue or something. There are still plenty of the good old DVD Eggs, though, to keep me busy for awhile yet.

Limoncello Tasting

We finished up our Limoncello last Thursday, and were pretty pleased with the results. Yesterday we went over to our friends' house to do a comparison tasting - they'd made theirs with vodka instead of grain alcohol, and had also made an orange version (Aranciello) in addition to the lemon.


Our bottled Limoncello (silly perspective, but whatever). I just love the color of the liquid.

Their vodka versions have decidedly less "heat," as it were, but since the alcohol content was less they modified the recipe to include less water and slightly less sugar. When they pulled it out of the freezer it was actually more the consistency of a slushie, which disappointed them. The flavor was still quite good, and when it thawed to liquid it was quite similar in syrupy-ness to ours. The orange was noticeably sweeter, despite there being the same amount of sugar in their lemon version - it was the most dessert-like of all.

After we finished the tiny glasses of our grain alcohol version, small dollops of vanilla ice cream were deposited into the glasses with a splash more of the Limoncello - the combination was heavenly. It reminded me of the Limoncello ice cream at Mio Gelato, which I love, and gave me renewed hope that I can make a similar concoction at home.


The vanilla ice cream-Limoncello combo is in the small illy glass, the vodka-Limoncello is behind that, and the vodka-Aranciello is to the right.

Which Came First?

Seen on the street leading up to the Lake Oswego Farmer's Market - this whimsical new sculpture. I just love the thing.

Italian Lessons

After two weeks in our new Italian class, we're feeling quite good. The teacher is new to us, though she's a legend in the Italian teaching department at PCC. She's so kind and encouraging, and at the same time she's pushing us to learn and do more than we're immediately comfortable with. I'm particularly pleased to be getting so much out of this class, since I'm still supposed to start teaching my own in January. I'm still really nervous about it, but I feel like after 10 weeks of this class I'll feel much more confident walking into a roomful of students and starting to speak Italian!

To maintain the theme here, we found two idiomatic expressions on our Italian phrase-a-day calendar this week that I thought were pretty cute:

"Pianta carote!" means, "He/she's lying!" - but it translates literally to, "He/she's planting carrots!"

But my personal favorite is, "Hai scoperto l'America!" which means, "You are so clever!" but literally means, "You discovered America!"

From Around

In the tradition of a friend, here's a few things I found out there in the great unknown:

• This is interesting - how could I never have heard of this woman?
• Pretty pictures of the city I love.
• I didn't know Starbucks' cup #43 was missing, but someone found it. And I think the sentiment is valuable whatever your sexual orientation.
• I particularly love this hilarious post from an elementary school teacher who's clearly trying to curb her use of expletives. In the process, she seems to have invented a new language.

Nudism as Polite Dinner Conversation

I'm not sure what the law of averages is on this, but every time our server or the water-glass-filling guy came by our table on Saturday night we were talking about nudity. At one particularly embarrassing moment, I actually was just finishing the sentence, "Why on earth do people think those things are more fun when you're naked?!?" just as the water guy came over. I didn't see him until it was too late.

Our server, who had earlier complimented Chris and I on our eyeglasses, had a good sense of humor about it. Chris said, "I promise, our entire conversation tonight will not be about nudity." She said, "Oh, no, that's what we all talk about, isn't it? The best thing is talking about nude beaches where people are sporting fabulous eyewear." I'll return to that restaurant for her comment alone.

Sleeping In

As a teenager, I would stay up until 3am on weekends and then sleep in until 2pm. My father really hated it (which made it, of course, all the more appealing), saying I was wasting the day.

As an adult - at least in my post-college years - I've become one of those people who can't seem to sleep past 9am on weekends, almost regardless of how late I stay up. Apparently this weekend, however, I needed more sleep - I was still in a deep, deep sleep at 10:30am on Sunday when Chris finally woke me up.

I've never been young and foolish - members of my family will back me up when I say that I've basically always been old and boring. (At age 33 I'm finally growing into my default disposition.) But sleeping until 10:30am on a Sunday morning made me feel 15 again, if only until I tried to get out of bed and every bone in my body creaked.

A Few Random Things

I was in a two-day meeting Wednesday and Thursday, and Friday was crazy at work... So there's no theme to this, just a few things I hadn't gotten to lately.

• I recently finished Jasper Fforde's newest, "The Big Over Easy," and though I didn't love it as much as I love the Thursday Next series, this one (part of his new Nursery Crime series) was still fabulous. I've checked every single book of his out of the library, and was sorry I didn't own them while I read "The Big Over Easy" - I swear there are cross-references to the Thursday Next books, but I couldn't check. I think I'll have to head over to Powell's and start collecting his books. They're laugh-out-loud funny and stunningly witty. I have no idea how Fforde comes up with this stuff, but I'm sure glad he does.
• I saw "The Constant Gardener" for the second time last weekend (first time was early September), and it certainly holds up to repeated viewings. As with any movie that has something of a mystery element, you only get to have that feeling when all the pieces finally fall into place once - the first time you watch it - but that's the only disappointing thing about seeing this movie again. It's an absolutely beautiful film, both in terms of scenery and cinematography. The music is also so great that we bought the soundtrack after the second viewing. Good stuff, I hope it gets some Oscar attention.
• I'm going to a baby shower tomorrow afternoon, for which I had to do the requisite baby registry shopping last weekend. I don't know about anyone else, but shopping in the baby section leaves me completely bewildered. I don't understand what half (or more than half) of the stuff is for, which makes locating it in the store something of a challenge. I opted to shop at Target this time instead of Babies R'Us (the couple is registered both places), thinking a store that wasn't completely baby-fied would be easier to handle. (I've had more near-anxiety attacks in Babies R'Us than I care to think about.) But even if the baby section is a mere ten aisles, as was the case at Target, I still felt the familiar panic attack setting in. I had to take a break in home furnishings to catch my breath. Okay, it wasn't that bad, but it was close. Really. If I didn't already have plenty of reasons I shouldn't procreate, the baby section would provide me with a good'un.
• We had dinner with friends at Andina last weekend - we love the atmosphere at Andina, and we've had very good luck with the cocktails (the mojitos and pineapples mojitos were particular favorites this time), wine and "small plates" (my favorite is the crispy chicken studded with quinoa). Where we've had so-so experiences is the entrees - every time we've eaten there we've not been overly thrilled with those. I swear, one of these times we'll remember to stick to the left side of the menu and make a meal of just the small plates. We'd be completely happy with that, I'm sure. (And don't let our uneducated evaluation keep you from trying Andina - it's a fun restaurant with an interesting menu, and the cebiches are fabulous!)
• We're dining with more friends (I'm just as surprised as you are that we have more friends) tomorrow night at Lucy's Table, a place we haven't been in ages. I'm looking forward to a long meal, and am planning to eat lightly until dinner. Gotta save room for the good stuff.
• We finished making our limoncello tonight, and though it wasn't ice cold when we sampled it, we're still very happy. It's yum-yum-yumalicious, and we're already talking about making another batch. It's this fabulous lemon meringue color, all buttery-yellow and cloudy; it looks so innocent, but one whiff and you can tell there's something more sinister going on in there... The best kind of sinister, of course...

Holiday Photos

I finally got around to uploading most of our trip pictures to Flickr, and have created an album for them. Enjoy...

Travelicio.us

The folks at BootsnAll have done it again - this time with Travelicio.us. As if we needed more travel inspiration.

Life in New Orleans

In reading James Tata the other day, I find (among other interesting tidbits) this quite interesting blog from a writer in New Orleans. The posts I've read so far about the hurricanes are really insightful, but this is the one James Tata points to, and which is a particularly interesting commentary on race relations.

Along these lines, I hear on the news today that in addition to the other panic-induced lies which were spread in the wake of the disaster, the story that snipers were shooting at relief helicopters is apparently fiction as well.

Memories of Franzi

I wrote last week about my Tante Franzi, who just died at the age of 96. My father sent me a note telling me that, "She has been dying of something since I remember seeing her in 1958 when I used to visit Paris regularly. We who knew her just blew it off as her hypochondria." So when he heard she had died, he "could only respond with 'what did she die of?'" He heard she had visited with one of her grand-nephews (a cousin of mine from Israel) and his children in the days just before she died, and that her grand-nephew "reported that Franzi had only one tooth of her own when he saw her and she complained about it hurting."

I love that story.

In addition to the warmth I recall (which I wrote about last week), the image that stuck with me the most from my one visit with her in 1992 is this: After so many years of wearing high heels, she couldn't not wear them even after she was basically confined to her apartment. During my visit, she wore the Parisian equivalent of a housedress (making it much more fashionable than an American one, bien sur), stockings and heels. I, a traveling college student in my leggings and t-shirt, felt supremely underdressed.