Six impossible things before breakfast

And then the camera zapped the computer

2008-03-13T16:44:00.003-05:00

and now the computer won't come back on.
Seriously, how weird is that? I plugged it in and turned it on like usual and everything froze. And then I got a message about a port ..what was the wording..surging, or something. and then it all locked up, and wouldn't even shut down with ctrl alt delete. So I turned it off, and now it won't boot back up.

Computers suck. It hasn't even been year since I had to wipe the whole thing to get rid of a virus. I hope all my important shit is backed up.

by the way

2008-03-10T08:28:00.009-05:00

Before I fill you in on my pleasant yet again not earth-shaking day yesterday, and my pleasant but not earth-shaking plans for today, here’s some catching up:

First, here are a few pictures of Vance and Wade destemming grapes last year. That machine magically shakes the grapes off of the stems, and throws the grapes in the tub and the stems on the ground.

2nd: Exciting news: this summer, we are getting a Trader Joe’s in Richmond. It’s going to be out near Short Pump.

3rd: Last summer these caterpillars kept eating my parsley to the ground. I left them alone because they looked like butterfly caterpillars. Just now I finally got around to googling “butterfly caterpillar parsley” and sure enough, they are the caterpillar form of the black swallowtail butterfly, which I find especially beautiful and we have tons of them, so I suppose I will never have parsley in the summer again.

Spring break Day 1

2008-03-09T09:39:00.007-05:00

Note to undergrad roommates: Friday I was remembering the spring break where none of us went anywhere, but we got in Gil’s car with the top down and got on 64 with all the lucky vacation-goers, waving at other cars like everyone else who was leaving town, and drove down to the next exit and got off and came back. And did it again. Remember?
It was cold and rainy Friday, so we wouldn’t have done that this year.
That's ok bc there was a good happy- hour celebration of the start of spring break. High faculty turnout, if you can imagine.

Now back to Spring break, first day. Just to prove that if I don’t update, it’s because nothing much is going on.

Betsy woke me before 7. Damn dog.
It was a pretty morning. We had eggs and leftovers—leftover corned beef hash and leftover sweet potato hash. We had to go pick up the car from the shop (nothing serious) and on the way we drove by houses coming up for trustees’ sales. There are a few listed that are both cool and cheap—or at least, the opening bids are cheap. I have no idea how this all plays out in reality, and we don’t have piles of cash sitting around, obviously, if we just kept our thermostat on 54 degrees all winter so we could pay the oil bills, but just in case we should generate cash at any point, I like to watch this stuff.

So we drove by 2 houses –one in Jackson Ward, 1 in Ginter Park—and then went to pick up the car in Lakeside, and went our separate ways.

I went over to the West End Antique Mall with a mission. I knew there was someone there who has a stack of china that matches my grandmother’s violet china that I love so much, but it is too $$$ for me. And my mission was to remind myself how much it was, and gloat, bc I just scored a wad of it on eBay fairly reasonably. (Not that I have $200 to spend on china. But it was so relatively cheap that I knew that I would kick myself forever if I didn’t get it. I made vows about taking my lunch to school for the rest of the semester to offset the extravagance.) Anyway, it would have cost me an extra $500 to get it from this dealer, and another $200 on top of that to get it from the biggest antique dealer online, so I feel no guilt, only a pressing need to invite 17 people to a dinner party soon.

Then I reviewed my to-do list for spring break:
--Library (Vance just found 4 very overdue books and I wanted some cookbooks)
--Ruby Red Beauty supply store (blowdryer quit working Tuesday and Mom expressed desire for pretty headbands)
--Walgreens (three itchy spots on body. Some rash, doesn’t look like poison ivy, more like weird hives, but better pick up Zanfel just to be sure)
--Food Lion (usual stuff)
--make oatmeal bread
--do 5 week’s worth of laundry
--Grade things
--clean things
--rake things
--mulch things
--rewrite things
--read things
--Write things
The Library won. I went and was sitting with a stack of cookbooks, narrowing them down to a manageable load (and I would like to emphasize, for anyone who thinks that I already have too many cookbooks, that this is the only reason I don’t have more) and was choosing between 2 party cookbooks, and a Middle Eastern one vs a Turkish one, and trying to find the German one we had in January bc Vance needed to copy a recipe for our proposed German Night, and I was also sorting through some Cuban cookbooks to see if there was a recipe for Tres Leche cake, when the power went out. I had to abandon my books and leave with everyone else.
The wind was picking up—that might be what took the power down—so I went home. And the wind was crazy! I saw it blow shingles off a house on Nine Mile Rd. After I got home, it blew open the kitchen back door—not the outside door, which was locked, but the inside back door. Enough wind got into the back porch that it flung the chair that also is propped on the door aside, bam.
I started to make oatmeal bread and realized that my yeast has finally died. Twice I started over, proofing it, and twice nothing happened, and once I didn’t realize until I had thrown molasses in, which meant I didn’t have enough molasses for the bread and had to sub in some honey. The yeast was looking weak the last few times I used it—this was a 5 pound bag I got years ago, so it owes me nothing, but its death was holding up the bread. Vance called from the store, luckily, and I got him to pick up some yeast (Food Lion doesn’t carry the right molasses, so he couldn’t help me there).
While I was waiting for him to come from the store, I realized that the house looked really cool in the gazing ball that Hillary and Mike passed on to us before they moved. So I took about 30 pictures of it.

And then Vance got home. So I was able to start the bread, and while it was rising we went back to the library and refound my books, and also picked up a bunch of movies, and came home and watched movies and waited for the bread.
We watched a BBC detective show—Campion—the sort of thing you would like if you like their Detective Poirot shows, and then a Peter Ustinov Poirot movie, which was terrible. I chose those 2. The we watched The Howling, which Vance picked up because he couldn’t remember if he had ever seen it, and I couldn’t remember how it went, although right after it began, we both remembered the ending. It was fun to see it again, except I think they were a little too proud of their special effect back then, bc it took about 20 minutes every time someone changed into a werewolf.
And we ate bread, finally.
That was the day, in detail.

where have I been?

2008-01-27T08:56:00.000-05:00

I dunno. Not doing too much. We had good holidays. Thanksgiving was a small event. Richard and Tommy came over. We ate a lot. Most of it was good, but the turkey got overcooked (dry!) and my gravy kinda sucked (bland!) but the sweet potatoes and potato and turnip gratin and stuffing were good and the rolls were as fluffy as I have ever gotten them.
The semester seemed endless, but it finally was over. Grading took forever, mostly because of all the students I had who just would not finish up. Finally I gave out something like 15 Incompletes and came home.
Christmas… I do love Christmas decorations. 2 live trees again, plus the aluminum tree, which I still haven’t completely taken down. 8 for Christmas dinner. The number of people we were expecting kept fluctuating—up to 15, down to 6, back up to 8—so we cooked for about 30, as usual. We had a GOOSE. Goose rocks because it is self-basting. All you have to do is keep removing the fat from it. We ended up with 2 tubs of goosefat. Wow. But we also had a turkey, and country ham and honey ham, and Marti’s bing cherry jelly, and Aunt Frances’ scalloped pineapple, and Catherine’s brandied peaches, and 2 kinds of stuffing (1 with sausage) and 2 kind of sweet potatoes (1 was a savory gratin), and cranberry relish, and oysters, and I don’t even remember what else. Dinner landed on the table about 2 hours later than we predicted. We always have a marathon Christmas—Christmas Eve dinner at Dick and Marti’s, then Christmas brunch at Wade and Andrea’s, then dinner at our house.
Betsy got a gingerbread house (ok, it’s rawhide, not gingerbread) for Christmas.

Went to Baltimore for Aunt Frances’ 100th birthday party. She’s still the sharpest person in the room. Saw a bunch of cousins and second cousins I haven’t seen in forever.
Went to Liz and Jimmy T’s New Year’s Eve party. We had people over on New Year’s Day… everyone seemed low key and hungry.
And then we went to St Augustine for a few days…not long enough. Never long enough.

And now… school is back in full swing and I am supposed to be grading and finishing an article I have to get out today—some of the papers from the conference I went to in Sept are supposed to be published together in American Nineteenth-Century History. I don’t know much about the journal but it is indexed in sociological abstracts so that’s cool.
I have some sort of cold...nasty.
Amy visited last weekend. This pic is from her October/November visit. Soon we will have Amy in VA for good. That’s a cheerful thought so I’ll stop here…

catching up

2007-11-04T07:57:00.000-05:00

I have just been too busy to post. And I haven't been taking many pictures, and people who have pictures haven't emailed them to me...
We went to the fair. (Pen needs to email me some pics and then I will post them.)
We had a party Friday night. (There were cameras there; I will post pics.)
We had the final harvest. (I will post pics of destemming for the home brew.)
To tide you over, here's Betsy's photoshoot for the party invite:

"Betsy, this is your best shot:"

And the final edited copy:

Dave and Gil just left.

2007-09-16T17:12:00.000-05:00

And what a lovely 24 hours we just had.
They arrived around lunchtime yesterday.
We had lunch at Golden Skillet. At some point during the roommate reunion in August, Vance and I had mentioned that there were still a few Golden Skillets in Richmond, and Gil about fell out, so that was a needed first stop. I had trout. Dave got shrimp for the table, and nuggets and wings. Vance and Gil got chicken. Then we got an 8 piece box to take home, just in case.
There was some champagne before and after, and I was baking a loaf a bread, and then we finally got motivated and went to Carytown. We went to Mongrel, World of Mirth, One Thousand Villages, shopping like mad all the while, and a new Halloween Store that was just opening, which is where things got a bit rowdy, because they had a great wig section.
Gil got a mullet, Dave got a viscount, Vance got a chest wig, and I got a "ghost doll."

We went to Can Can and sat at the bar and got drinks and put the wigs on and we were the FINEST people in the place. Then the guys got more drinks (I was the driver and couldn’t! no limo this time). Then we became discontent with my wig and went back and got a geisha wig for me, which doesn’t fit my big head.
Went home after a quick stop at the liquor store. Wore wigs and played charades, and things went a bit downhill because of this other thing Vance bought at the Halloween store:

Yes, it is a skull shaped beer bong, which might not have been such a terrible thing, if CERTAIN PEOPLE hadn’t decided to shoot vodka tonics.

So the game of charades ended up like this:
The word Vance is going for is “angel.”

Nice halo effect.

Flapping little angel wings

More insistent with the angel wings

Dave and I are like “Gil, it won’t work if you don’t open your eyes.”

Gil: “Bitch! My eyes ARE open.”

"Fear me! I am the skull vodka-bong of doom!"

Gil goes down.

And the rest of us follow.

Today we slept in. We tried to go to the drag brunch at Godfrey’s but the place was full and the 1st show was almost over when we got there. Rather than wait until 2 for the next show, we went to Kuba Kuba. MMMMMMMM.
Then walked through Maymont Park, drove through the city and looked around, then came home. And then they left.
B'bye with a tear in m'eye.

B’Bye!

B’bye!
Come back soon!

Sigh.

In other news—roughly 12 gallons of tempranillo are starting to bubble away…

Catching up

2007-09-16T16:42:00.000-05:00

So behind on updates… well, school started. What do you expect?

What has happened in the gap? —we went to a conference in NY. Sarita was very clever and looked on Craig’s list and found us an apartment half a block off Central Park which ended up being slightly less expensive than the conference hotel.

In no particular order, here’s Pat, Amy Gwyn, Sarita, Natasha, Vance, Tony, Britney, Susan, and Scott.

Vance in Central Park:

Then I went to a conference in Norwich at UEA. Very cool conference. Had about 3 hours to see London. Stayed half a block from Trafalgar square.

Saw Big Ben,

Buckingham Palace,
Westminster Abbey--didn't go in anywhere, mind you, just saw them--
etc etc ,
then took a train out of King’s Cross, but unfortunately not from Platform 9 3/4 but here’s a picture of it for you Harry Potter fans).

The campus at UEA is covered with giant bunnies, for some reason.

School started weeks ago. I finally got my office this past Wednesday. Things have been hectic, but the semester is going well.

2nd annual roommate reunion

2007-08-05T17:53:00.000-05:00

I will have to write this up then go back and load pics. Bear with me and my dial-up.

We went to Waynesboro for our second annual roommate reunion (UVA, classes of 88-89).

Present:
Dave

Gil

Jenny

Caroline

me

Leslie, briefly
Vance

Betsy

Bonnie Sue

Hampton

These are at Dave's house.
Friday we got there (except Jenny, who arrived Sat morning) and we ate and drank and ate and drank and caught up. Vance and I and Betsy stayed with Dave; Caroline stayed over at Gil's.
Saturday Leslie blew us off. We waited for Jenny and had a great brunch (quiche and cookies and cherries and peaches and biscuits and banana bread and croissants and champagne, champagne, champagne, and champagne with peaches in it and wine with peaches in it, and we planned our day. In the running for activities: the county fair, wineries, or swimming pools. Wineries won. Jenny got there and had champagne and then came the problem: we wanted to go to wineries but no one wanted to drive. Gil said he would take care of it and after a short walk and a few phone calls he came back with his solution.......

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh

No

he

didn't!

Oh yes he did.

So we loaded up the cooler

and off we went,

with one longish

stop on the way,

having run out of champagne.

It's a shame that everyone that reads this wasn't along with us. You all would have fit, and then some.

(On the way there and the way back, I took many many pictures of the cars passing us, trying to capture the expressions of disbelief on people's faces. Never got a really really great shot though.)

We went to Rockbridge winery and tasted their prize-winning wines and bought a lot, and then had a picnic there.

That sandwich is about to turn on Dave.

Open the wine already.

Dave's famous watermelon salad.

My favorite picture ever of Gil.

And home again.

Somewhere in here my camera lens got cracked, hence the thing that looks like lens fare on some of these shots.

Then we went back, and soaked in Gil's fabulous above-ground pool (and must have looked like we were having fun, because this morning his neighbor had bought one just like it.)

And we went and ate at Scotto's (Italian food).

and went back to Dave's for more of the same. 80's music and conversation.

Oh why oh why aren't we all still living in the same town.

seen in the parking lot

2007-07-18T15:11:00.001-05:00

Honk if you think I put this up for you.

Maymont park

2007-07-18T14:32:00.000-05:00

It hit me, as I walked through Maymont Park last week, that I am always taking people there in the winter. So for the edification of those of you who have seen it in the drab cold days of winter, here are a few shots with flowers, grass, and running water in the fountains.

Above is a shot of the fountain and stairs in the Italian Garden; below is a shot of the waterfall in the Japanese garden.

The bears were out wrasslin'

It was so hot when I was there. I was mostly taking pictures of fences going up hills because--as part of my resolution to celebrate the end of grad school by spending the summer doing things I have always wanted to do, I decided to paint a big picture of crows standing in front of a fence on a hill.
Now everyone who knows me knows I can't draw any better than I can sing, but lack of skill notwithstanding, this is fun.
Here's the angle I started with

and here's the first stages of the painting

which has really kinda fallen apart since I began to add the crows, but it was off to a nice start, wasn't it?

File under “things that are just WRONG”

2007-07-16T23:55:00.000-05:00

Sorting through mom’s old recipes that I filed in with mine, I found this:

Hot apple pie

1 ½ tsp raisins
¼ C + 2 T applesauce
1 pk artificial sweetener
2 tsp reduced calorie margarine
Apple pie spice to taste

Mix well.
Stuff into pocket of a mini pita. Wrap in foil. Bake until heated. Serve 1.

1 fruit, 1 fat, 1 bread

Ok, so we have a 1) imitation of a fast food “hot apple pie,” which pretty uniformly suck to start with, and 2) Two of the 6 ingredients start with the word “artificial” and 3) this has really got to suck and 4) look at the exchanges you blow on this anyway! (If you do that sort of thing. Which I don’t.)

So very wrong, on so many counts. Had to share before I threw it away.

July 4

2007-07-09T08:16:00.000-05:00

We went up to the farm on the evening July 3rd so Vance could get up early and spray various fungicides and pesticides in the morning. Oh, the glamour of a vineyard.
The Cab franc grapes look like this:

Here's some shots of Vance and Betsy. Unfortunately I didn't have the camera out earlier in the day when she was standing on the picnic table. (I guess to a dog of small brain it does look like a stairway.)

Then we came home and went to the fireworks at Dogwood Dell, which, of all the towns that play the 1812 Overture with fireworks, is apparently the only one that has both 1) cannons and a military attachment to shoot them off and 2)an attached Carillon, for the joyful bell-ringing part. Yes, we were told, even Boston has to pipe their bell sounds in.

flowers

2007-06-30T00:32:00.001-05:00

Centerfold lilies
Easter lily
Yelloween lily
gooseneck loosestrife

cats

2007-06-30T00:16:00.000-05:00

cats

2007-06-30T00:11:00.000-05:00

Recent pics

Raphael's bad week

2007-06-24T20:23:00.000-05:00

Vance heard Raphael calling Monday morning, so he went to see what the cat wanted, and the cat wanted a witness because he was about to barf. (Well, the dog thinks it’s cool, he says, so why not Vance?) His effort was not appreciated. After I got up, Raphael was trying to make amends for his earlier faux pas, and right after I got my coffee I heard him calling, making the dreaded muffled call (dreaded because if his call is muffled, it’s usually because he’s dragging some poor dead thing, or even worse, some poor half dead thing. Sure enough, here he comes into the dining room with some large critter handing out of his mouth—I tried to shoo him out but he dropped it and it was a bunny, and not even an injured one, judging from the way it took off immediately. Smart bunny found the front door right off, thankfully, with both cats in pursuit, followed by me, then by Vance, who headed Raphael off by throwing a boot at him. Raphael gave up then, and allowed himself to be wrestled down and put inside, and after a minute Luigi also became captive. I never saw where the bunny went; hope it didn’t die of fright or injuries somewhere on the porch. Raphael also vanished, but he has paths out of the house that only he knows about. He was pissed and his feelings were hurt. He said it was meant as a great present. I believe him; he NEVER shares rabbits with us.

Then Tuesday I went outside and there was something hanging out of Betsy’s mouth. I told her to drop it and it was another damn bunny. I scooted it into a flowerpot and figured it was not long for this world but could at least die in peace. Betsy walked around looking for it and Raphael appeared and was searching for something too, so maybe Betsy stole it from him. (I have no idea what she thought she was doing, whether she wanted to eat a snack or move a puppy. Hard to tell.) An hour later the bunny was lurching around in the flowerpot trying to find its way out. I couldn't let it go, though, because its eyes weren’t open and if I put a blind bunny down anywhere near this house, I might as well just give it directly to the cat. So after some calling around I got in touch with an animal rehabber who said she would take it. I was worried no one would since my vet once said a wildlife rehabber told him rabbits were “nature’s snack food.” The rehabber I found is affiliated with a group called ARK. She said she had a bunch of other rabbits the same age as this one, so he was going to have buddies while waiting for his eyes to open. She was impressed with how fat he was. Of course, it is rabbit Club Med in the woods behind us.

Still trying to make things up to us, Raphael on Wednesday night was heard out in the yard making the dreaded muffled cry, and I hopped up to get the door shut before he made it in, and TOO LATE! We met just inside the door and he flung a LIVE BAT at my feet. It immediately took flight right at me. I ducked; chaos ensued. There has been such a problem with rabies in Henrico County this year—foxes attacking children and what have you—and I don’t touch barehanded anything Raphael brings up, even the sweet little bunnies, because you never know, but now there was a bleeding bat flying around the house. Great. He settled down really quick over a doorway—I think he was pretty hurt, poor bat.

It took a while and the sacrifice of a couple of blankets (at least we had a few ripped up ones) but we got the bat snared in a blanket and took him outside. He had enough energy left to fly right at me again when we unrolled the blanket. Ick. I doubt he survived.

We have been much more careful about making sure the screen door is shut all the way since then. We had been out of cat treats and I think, on reflection, that Raphael was trying to negotiate some new treats from me by bringing me the cool stuff he caught. I got new treats and he hasn’t tried to drag anything new in the house since.

In other news, the lilies look great this year. I will post some garden pics soon. And I have begun ripping up the sporadic pavers and concrete in the yard so I can make a sidewalk.

hank is cute

2007-06-02T22:21:00.000-05:00

and still up for adoption...

quick update

2007-06-02T21:51:00.000-05:00

Things have kept me too busy to post.

Graduation was cool.
There was a huge protest because Andrew Card was getting a honorary doctorate, but I already wrote a diary about that on kos (it made the recommended list, which has never happened to me before. There I go, chipping away at my 15 minutes of fame) so I’m not going to write about it here. The ceremony itself was very long, and I suppose excruciating to viewers, but I had a blast.

Afterwards Dick and Marti took Bob, Naomi, Jay, Pat, Amy, Jesse, Leslie, James, Vance and I out to Carmelina’s. Funnest diner I’ve had in ages. Might have been the champagne, might’ve been just watching everyone talk, talk, talk. That was last Friday the 25, which was also my birthday. We were staying at Pat’s and so were Amy Leslie and James.

Here we are on the way to dinner.

Saturday Pat made a fabulous brunch and then we went to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean. We liked it; I don’t know what the critics who say it’s hard to follow are talking about. And then we came home. I have been fighting the poison ivy in the yard (and it has been fighting me back, ow) and doing lots of the other little errands and chores I have let slide for the past year or two. Nice to have the time.

Today we went to the Blackbeard Pirate Festival in Hampton.

Tall ships, pirates everywhere-- this guy was drawing everyone’s attention to the pirate ship that was about to overtake a merchant vessel out on the river.

We are definitely going back next year.

Done

2007-05-01T06:37:00.000-05:00

I am done. I have defended my dissertation.

Let the celebrations begin!

VA Tech

2007-04-16T21:46:00.000-05:00

How awful, how sad.

Betsy has a boyfriend

2007-04-12T17:36:00.000-05:00

Awwwwwwww

Betsy hearts Devlin.

Unfortunately it's a long distance relationship.

Or maybe fortunately--

That's wine.

2007-04-07T07:43:00.000-05:00

Or rather, sometime soon, that will be wine.

more of the same

2007-04-07T07:32:00.000-05:00

If I didn't have pets, what would I take pictures of?

By the way, no one has adopted the spare cats yet. Here's Hank and Ciao Ciao. Anyone want a cat?

Halloween and day of the dead

2007-04-07T07:16:00.000-05:00

We didn't get around to having our big Halloween party--maybe this year we will--but I did build an offrenda for la Dia de los Meurtos. Seemed fitting given the losses we'd had. I bought molds and made a huge pile of sugar skulls.

back to year in review

2007-04-07T07:11:00.000-05:00

Then in october there was the harvest at the vineyard. That's Mr. Bruce and Vance loading grapes. I thought I had a shot of me driving the tractor, but I can't find it, which is a shame, because probably you're disbelieving it, but I can drive a tractor.

seriously

2007-04-07T06:58:00.000-05:00

no, really, they grow all over the yard.

ok

2007-04-07T06:39:00.000-05:00

I will admit, I have been bad about updating, as David C chided me last night (this is for YOU Dave).
What has been going on since August?
School, of course. Teaching and trying to finish the dissertation. Good news there--they are letting me defend in 3 weeks! So I remain ungodly busy... but if all goes well, I will graduate on May 25.

Looking back at the year in pictures--well, half the year in pics, since the computer was attacked by viruses in Jan and it took two months for me to finally give up and have the whole thing wiped, and then after all that the CD Rom quit working, and I haven't downloaded any pics since--this is what I've been doing.
First, isn't Luigi a good-looking cat? (He asked me to put this up. He is vain like that.)

In late summer these flowers grow wild all over the yard. It is amazing.

I'm going to upload this entry since when I put on bunches of pics at once, it always crashes before they upload.

More Scotland pics

2006-08-19T08:22:00.004-05:00

How cool, Blogger is letting me upload pics today. I never finished putting up pics from England and Scotland last month because it was having a snit about uploading. So here's Vance at the Willow Tea room and me near the Edinburgh castle and Vance at the castle.

the cats will play

2006-08-19T08:20:00.000-05:00

Since we got back, Raap-aye-ey, the gray cat whose name we can’t spell, has been tired. And he’s thinner than usual. This picture on Gwyn’s site might explain what he was doing while we were gone, to get so tired.

elephant ring

2006-08-19T08:15:00.000-05:00

A jade elephant, in a gold cage, with a smoky quartz top.

Most. Beautiful. Ring. Ever.

Montreal

2006-08-17T09:34:00.000-05:00

We left Wednesday and drove to Western MA, taking the back way up 81 and the Taconic Parkway, which adds over 100 miles to the drive but is so worth it. Around holidays it can actually be faster, there’s so much less traffic, and you don’t get that sense of impending doom that traffic on 95 can cause, and it is actually a pretty drive through PA countryside and rural NY. And you get to stop in Frackville at the Dutch Kitchen, which we found by accident once, looking for something that wasn’t fast food, and when we walked in and saw the write-up by Gourmet calling it some of the country’s best road food, we knew we had scored. So that’s a must do going north, just for the chicken and dumplings, which, if you are taking my advice and stopping there, are called something like “chicken pot pie casserole.” The trip was uneventful, except near Harrisburg there were signs on the highway telling us that 81 was closed, and to use “alt routes,” which always just means “you’re on your own, and boy are you screwed.” But we were fine, having lots of state maps in the car. Anyway, we stayed the night with Pat, and Amy, also heading to Montreal, also stayed there, so it was like old times. We went to eat at Joe’s in Northampton and then got ice cream at Harrel’s and walked around and looked at the very Valley art exhibit in the park.
Left for Montreal in the morning. Amy departed to pick up Brittney; Vance and I got right on the highway. We had decided to go north on 93 and then across VT; we made it about ½ an hour and then traffic stopped at Greenfield. We called Amy to make sure she wasn’t coming behind us but they were using 90 west to NY and were going to go up the—what, throughway? I forget. The one that goes by Plattsburg. And when we called they were actually going back to Brittney’s house bc she had forgotten her passport. So we both lost time up front. Upper MA and lower VT were under construction; that’s what the stoppage was, and the roads were being milled, so we went along for a while at 45-55 mph and then pulled over at a rest area to grab a VT map and various brochures about Ben and Jerry’s and Cabot cheese and a Teddy bear museum (that’s for the nieces) and got back on the road and the moment I caught up to the speed of traffic around me, blammo, I got pulled for speeding in a work zone. So while I was totally polite, I was so pissed off bc I have turned into one of these old lady drivers who doesn’t speed and gets honked at by other drivers, especially in work zones where the fines double, and I had just merged into traffic and caught up, hadn’t even glanced down yet to see what speed traffic was going, and of course with the VA plates I get yanked out of the line of cars with VT plates and given a ticket. So I’m feeling all “the hell with Vermont” bc the ticket is $174 and 2 points on my license. I suppose that I should feel some gratitude bc this is when we discover that my driver’s license expired in May—aren’t they supposed to send you a reminder about that?—and I didn’t get a ticket for it, but no. Screw Vermont.
So we continue, with Vance driving, as he will have to for the entire rest of the trip to Montreal and back, and after a while the car starts to make a funny noise. Maybe it’s bad gas, we think, having gotten water in the tank recently, so we pull over and fill the tank up, and once we start again, it gets even worse. So we go to a garage, and get them to check the car out, and they say the engine is throwing a code that only a dealer can fix. There’s something wrong with the computer that needs either resetting or replacing. There is only 1 Saturn dealership in VT, but it’s in Burlington, which is on our way, and we have AAA plus, which covers tows of up to 100 miles, and the garage we are at actually has a AAA towing service, so this part could’ve been much worse. As it is, after much calling back and forth with Theresa at the dealership, we get towed 60+ miles to Burlington.
The people at the dealership were nice—beating the hell out of the one in Richmond, might I say—and they break it to us that if this part needs replacing, it costs $800+ and then there’s labor and whatnot. I begin to boil a bit, bc this is the low mileage expensive car I bought, thinking I would save money and aggravation if for once I bought a car with 30,000 miles instead of 100,000, and it has been the biggest piece of crap ever, and it’s not going to be paid off for another few years, and meanwhile I’m stuck bc it’s worth less than I owe on it and it sucks up my spare cash with these expensive repairs. Like the timing belt snapping at 70,000 miles, revealing that it had been installed improperly and costing over $1000.
The mechanics test the car, and I am waiting nervously, and I see this communication between a mechanic and our new best friend Theresa, who is handling this, and she says “Well, get me a price on that part too” so I go outside, bc I feel a major meltdown coming on. Unfortunately, I am trying to calm down from my rage against Saturns, and in the parking lot I am surrounded by them, so it doesn’t work. I get back inside and Vance is holding an estimate for $1200 and change bc TWO computers have gone down. And that’s the price after Theresa has called and gotten a discount. This is when I do lose it a little and denounce Saturns in general and this car in particular, and say it is the least reliable car I’ve ever had, and owning it is like indentured servitude, and whatnot. I believe I use the word"sucks" a bit. I believe I feel VERY emotional about this car.
Then Theresa says that the best mechanic will be in in the morning ) that’s the earliest the parts will be there) and she will get him to look at it again before they do anymore work. Either Vance’s charm (she is from Kentucky, and he was born in TN, and he has been discussing this with her) or my meltdown has worked on her. Good customer, bad customer, like good cop, bad cop?
We get them to drive us to the bus station, and eventually catch a bus to Burlington, arriving at 11:00 p.m. It should have been a 4-5 hour drive and took 13 hours. VT becomes the state that it takes $1400 and 10 hours to cross.
Anyway, we were supposed to meet our friend Susan and have dinner that night, and that is obviously long cancelled (thank god for cell phones) but we go to her hotel and close down the hotel bar, and then, feeling unfinished with our reunion (Susan has also had a bad year) we go to her room and raid her mini bar in a big big way. We stagger back to our hotel, which is a Travelodge with great rates but no minibars, and fall in bed around 3 a.m.

More later, including how the car repairs only cost $200 after all, and we saw lots of friends and I went to great sessions and my paper presentation went just fine, and Montreal is cool.

Dear Verizon

2006-07-31T18:46:00.000-05:00

July 27, 2006

To whom it may concern:

My mother, E--- W---, had a Verizon Wireless Account, # ****. She has been suffering from dementia for a few years. My brother was handling all her business for the past 2-3 years. (I have no idea why he did not cancel her account with you, since she has been unable to work mechanical devices for quite some time now, but that’s a moot point now.) My brother died in January and I took over my mother’s affairs. In early April I realized that this Verizon account was still active. After calling your customer service department, I was told to fax in a copy of the Power of Attorney that I hold for my mother. I did, and requested that the account be cancelled.

A few weeks ago I received a letter from you concerning this account. The letter claimed that the account had been canceled for non-payment, and that E W had better pay up before the account went into collections. It neglected to give the account number, and did not actually state what amount was due; as such it was just the sort of masterpiece of incompetence that I have come to expect from your company.

I called your company and talked to a customer service representative (who seemed somewhat on the ball, for a change) who told me that there was a note on the account that a fax had been received in early April, but that no other information about the fax was recorded. In other words, some brainless fool didn’t know what to do with it, and tossed it without recording that it was a POA giving me power to handle the account and that I requested that the account be closed. I was encouraged to fax this information again. I declined. I have better things to do than to continuously drive around town sending faxes for your incredibly incompetent employees to lose.

I am sending you the amount that my mother owed as of the day I asked you to cancel her account. You have placed the account in collections; I have written to notify the collection agency that I dispute the amount.

I have the printout that I received confirming that you did receive a fax from me in early April. I have the fax I sent. There is a note on her account stating that you received a fax. If you chose to pursue this further, you are even more ridiculous than I supposed.

I would love to tell you that I will never be your customer again because of your mishandling of this account; unfortunately I can’t, since I already swore to never have dealings with you again when you managed to screw up my home account for over a year in 2001-2002. You jokers are beyond belief.

This note might be rude, but then, so is harassing the bereaved. And I believe that after a certain point, incompetence that is always in Verizon’s favor—financially-- ceases to look like incompetence at all, and starts to look like a deliberate attempt to defraud. Think about that before you try to squeeze any more money out of my mother.

k____

Glasgow

2006-07-28T08:31:00.000-05:00

The next day we finished touring museums, and then we took a train to Glasgow, which is a fairly short hop. We went there with a mission: see as much of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s work as was possible. The first night we found Glasgow’s Mussel Inn and had dinner and did a little recon, trying to figure out where the important things were. Got some sleep and in the morning, we started our tour with breakfast at one of the Willow Tea Rooms, then went to the Lighthouse, the Scotland Street School, the House for an Art Lover (wow), and the Glasgow School of Art (wow), followed by afternoon tea (wow) at another Willow Tea Room. We walked and rode the subway to get everywhere. Great subway; it just goes in a big circle so it’s not like you can get lost or anything.
After tea we pretty much gave out and started walking back to the hotel, but it was Friday going-home time, and there was a respectable reggae band playing outside on one of the plazas we walked through, so we sat down and people- watched for a while before heading back.
Glasgow is a modern city with a few old touches; it was more generic in a way than the other places we had been, in the sense that it could’ve been any post-industrial European city, but it had a funky edge that was cool. The best way to sum it up was the bagpipers. In Edinburgh we kept passing by people laying bagpipes, always in kilts with all the bells and whistles. In Glasgow we only passed by one bagpiper and he was a skinny rockstar/heavy-metal looking dude, all in tight black jeans and tee-shirt, with long hair down his back.
Anyway, by this point I was tired. That’s a lot of walking in a week. So I was glad to be entering the last leg of the journey. We took a train to Manchester.

Odds and ends

2006-07-26T08:28:00.000-05:00

And let me take a break from vacation stories to sum up life since we got back:

Got an R&R from Poetics +1
Invited to present paper at another conference in East Anglia next year +1
Ate bad egg salad sandwich; stomach went just as electricity got knocked out in storm, taking running water with it -1
Electricity actually came back on this time +1
Dave's accidental death insurance claim denied -1 (yes, I'm appealing.)
Mom's Medicaid approved +1
Cat peed on heating pad; didn't notice til it heated up on the bed -1
Contract on David's house fell through due to seller financing gone south -1
Power company actually showed up to deal with Dave's downed power lines after a mere week of calls 0 (Lines went down in Hurricane Isobel. Yes, Isobel. 2003, for non-Virginians)
electrician on vacation 0
House inspectors suggest leaky oil tank. Vance and I think oil company spilled oil a few months ago. 0

To sum up: you win some, you lose some.

BTW Dave C: you should be able to comment without signing up, but you will have to go through the anti-spam thingy where you identify the letters.

More Edinburgh

2006-07-26T08:11:00.000-05:00

In the morning, after another one of those huge breakfasts at the hotel, we went and saw the 3D Loch Ness Experience. The dazzling awesome 3D effects are mostly the narrator tossing things at the camera as he speaks, but it was still fun for 2 reasons: they explained why the water of the Loch Ness is so dark (peat bogs) and they had great footage showing how a boat wake on a calm day looks like a many-humped sea serpent. Very cool, although I know Nessie exists nonetheless. Then we stopped at a Christmas store, where I picked up a few ornaments for me and a few for Vance’s mom.
Then we toured the castle. It goes on and on and on. Great halls, smaller museums, chapels, the Crown Jewels, for pete’s sake. It was a misty day, cold and blowy, with a very low sky. All very Scotland. Beautiful. Afterwards we were hungry and tired. We had lunch plans; from 2 different people/sets of people (Jack and Myrna, and Dave) we had been told that lunch at the Royal Museum was a must-do because the food is surprisingly good, and because the castle is right outside the window. David even gave me a card so I would remember, which I of course took out of my wallet right before we got out of the plane, and left behind, so we had to fish around for a while to find the right museum. It didn’t help that the National Museum is blammo right next to the castle, and we thought maybe that was the place. But “Royal” finally came to us, and we went and yes, the lunch was good, and wow, the view.

Then we toured the museums until they closed. It hit me, while looking at treasures from the past--Napoleon’s tea set, and a pile of silver objects that belonged to some unknown Pict--how incredibly much stuff we have, compared to just about every other human that has ever lived. That Pict might have been wealthy in his/her day, but I could kick his/her ass in terms of possessions, and I'm so middle America.

Edinburgh, day one

2006-07-24T09:03:00.000-05:00

In Edinburgh we finally changed the camera battery.
Edinburgh is amazing. In York the friendly museum guide told us that if you were king and got to create the perfect city, you would create Edinburgh, and I see what he meant. We got off the train and after some confusing moments trying to find our way out of the mall that’s attached to the station, we spilled out onto Princes Street, which is the major shopping street in Edinburgh. It’s part of the “new” section, which means it was created post-Dark Ages. Our hotel was just beyond the castle, so we walked to it.
The castle dominates the skyline. This was the view on the way to the hotel.

After we checked in, we went and had lunch or dinner at the Mussel Inn (enthusiastically recommended by the York museum guide). I had the famous kilo of mussels, of course, with the blue cheese sauce. My god they were good. Vance was cautious and got scallops, they being—so he tells me—the least risky thing on the menu for someone in his still delicate condition. After we ate we walked about the Royal Mile for a while. I noted the location of several Christmas stores. We went into St Giles Cathedral, and then we toured Mary King’s Close. Since the Royal Mile is at the top of a ridge, people used to live along alleys (or “closes”) that ran sharply down the hill from it. In 1753, when the city fathers decided to expand the Royal Exchange, they shaved the tops off of a bunch of these houses and used them as foundations for the new building. All the old buildings were forgotten for a while, but now there are tours. As with the exhibits at Jorvik, there was an emphasis in the tour of the Close on the lack of sanitation back in the day, with frequent reminders that if this was 1400, we’d be standing ankle deep in sewage. The guide assured us that that was why the flowers in the castle park gardens grow so large, even today.

York

2006-07-20T09:29:00.000-05:00

York is awesome.
When the train arrived we walked to the Georgian House, where we were staying, which is cheap and convenient but seems to have service issues. We had to ring the bell forever before someone came to the door, and the next day we heard another arrival ringing for about half an hour before they were checked in, and on our last morning, someone from the staff banged on our door and told us that breakfast was about to end a good half an hour before it was supposed to. (Seeing as breakfast times were posted in each room, they were easily busted in their little lie, but we were actually standing by the door about to go down anyway, so it didn’t matter. But still…)
As a general observation, I think it is cool that in England you actually get what you pay for. I found some incredibly cheap rooms for this trip, but getting the cheapest room in the house translates to having the tiny room that’s up 4 flights of a spiral staircase, under the rafters. All very artist-starving-in-the-garret.
Anyway, after we checked in, we went right out again and walked on the city walls. They are so high that you get great views of York Minster and the city from them. We stopped at one of the old gates (called “bars”)—Monk Bar, which has a funny little museum to King Richard the 3rd in it (he of the nephews). Then we left the walls and cut back into town, and stumbled across a Mystery Play in progress. Very cool, there were people dressed as little demons running around, and music, and obviously we had just missed Adam and Eve, since the actors were still around in costume. It ended with the demons being swallowed by the mouth of hell, from what I could make out (we were pretty far back, couldn't hear that well) and then another wagon rolled up and started a play about Roman soldiers who were around at the Resurrection. We watched that for a while and then wandered on looking for dinner, having missed lunch. For dinner we went to an Indian restaurant close to the B&B. The owner claimed to be from Detroit. It was good, even if the staff vanished once the World Cup final started.

In the morning we went to the Jorvik Viking Center and The York Castle Museum. In the Viking Center, you get to go on a ride that takes you past dioramas of what the city looked like when it was run by Vikings, which is sort of early-Disneyesque, except that they have recreated the smells of the time too. Most of the ride smells like a barnyard, except for the part that smells like an outhouse. Pretty amusing, in an eye-watering way. After the ride you see tons of exhibits of Vikings things that have been dug up locally.
The castle museum is fantastic; I had no idea it would be that cool. It recreates English daily life for several centuries; we were there for hours looking at costumes and recreated city streets and storefronts and dungeons and kitchens and living rooms and infinite other exhibits. We talked for a while with a guide who explained the creation of Clifford’s Tower to us and then gave us good advice on things to do when we got the Edinburgh. Then Vance began to flag a bit so we made our way back to the B&B so he could lie down. I went back out for an hour to check on train schedules for the next day and find a curd tart, which the museum guide told us we should try while in York, and to get something for dinner, since Vance said he didn’t think he would make it back out, and to duck into a Christmas store for a minute, and when I got back Vance had developed a fever that was getting fairly high, so we were pretty spooked for a few hours until the Advil that he took knocked it back down. He said he would go to the doctor if it hit 103, and it crested at 102.8. Spooky, being sick in a foreign country, even if it is England. So anyway, that was it for that day; we stayed in and read and ate the pasties I had bought. (steak and stilton, pork and apple. Yum.)

In the morning his fever was gone, and we had breakfast and then went to York Minster, dragging our luggage with us. It is a beautiful cathedral; we didn’t have enough time to do it justice.

Then we got on the train to Edinburgh. The train runs by the coast for a while, north of Newcastle. Beautiful.

Norwich

2006-07-19T09:05:00.000-05:00

So we took a train to Norwich. Slept most of the way, although I did wake up and peer out when they called the stop at Nottingham. Arrived at Norwich, took a cab to the Earlham Guest House, got settled in. Got a phone call from Angela, our realtor who is selling David’s house for us. A good offer came in the instant we left the US; she gave me some details. I said we’d call the next day. She needed me to find a fax machine to send me the contract. Ate dinner at a pub around the corner, went to bed, where I sat up for a good long while cutting my overlong paper by half and trying to give it some flow.

Friday we woke up to a proper English breakfast. Grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, baked beans, fried eggs, toast, jam and marmalade. Ate heavily, ironed my suit, ran through the paper again, went out to get the bus to the U of East Anglia, where the conference was being held. I ended up at the bus stop with the couple that had been at the next table at breakfast; turns out they were at the conference too. They were archeology grad students from the U of Glasgow, and he was giving a paper on mootscapes, after which they were going to another medieval conference in Leeds. And I thought I was booked up this summer. We muddled around the campus together and found the conference and checked in.

The conference—officially “Collective Memory and the Uses of the Past” –was interdisciplinary. Quite a few historians, some anthropologists and sociologists. And it was nicely international; the other person on my panel was a French guy doing work on myth-making about the Mayflower Compact. Here’s an older version of the program; some of the sessions were moved around (like mine) so the times are not right here. The first day I went to “Remembering the Crusades” and “Literature and Memory II” and then the session I was in from 5-630. The session went well; I had made exactly the right number of handouts, and we got interesting questions. It was funny; some of the European historians were amazed that in a country where Western history only goes back 400 years, that myth-making on this level could take place, and that it could exist at the academic level as well as in popular culture. I was glad to have a French historian on the panel with me; this kept the discussion in the realm of Americans as myth-makers, which was fruitful ground. A great time. Then the sessions knocked off and it was time for dinner, which was an catch-as-catch can affair at the campus eatery, where I had a chance to talk more to Lauric about our session and the World Cup, of course, it being 2 days before the final game. Then he showed me the most amazing thing—a field by the campus center where hundreds, literally hundreds of rabbits come out at dusk. During the day you can usually see twenty or so, but they swarm in the evening. Most amazing. Anyway, then I caught a cab back to the Guesthouse and Vance, who had been feeling weird all day and stayed in. We went walking around for a bit and bought drinks at the corner store, where the kid behind the counter regaled us with tales of his uncle, who hated Britain and moved to the US—Arizona, I think-- where he could have 4 Hummers sitting in his driveway. Found a phone booth, called Angela, said we’d take the offer.

The next day at beakfast, I realized that the two guys who had presented the papers on the crusades were also in our B&B. We shared a cab to campus; Vance went along to see where it was, and see rabbits. I went off to the conference. The conference was interspersed with me running over the campus trying to find a fax machine, which I finally did, so then at some point I called Angela with the fax number, and at some point Angela faxed me the contract, and at some point I signed it and faxed it back to her.
But mostly I was going to conference sessions. (Met some great people too, very friendly conference.) First there were opening remarks (new journal devoted to memory studies coming out!), and then a plenary on “Landscape and memory” which I think has sorted out some of my thinking on place and memory for my dissertation. It had been a sticking point. The I went to a session on History, Photography and memory—quite good—and then another plenary on “sociologies and memory” which was a bit disappointing because one of the speakers didn’t make it. Afterwards I went to a session on “What do we want history for?” and then I had had enough conferencing; I went back to Vance and we walked around Norwich.

He had located a promising looking tapas place for dinner but when we got there, an alarm was going off inside, so we wandered around more and finally went to a low-end French restaurant where we both got some tasty venison. Norwich has 2 cathedrals and at least 2 other churches that might as well be, and a castle, and some of them are made of this unusual flint, and there’s a bazaar that Vance had spent some time wandering through earlier, and we saw some cool lion statues—this is when we realized that the battery was dead in the camera, so we have no pics of Norwich or York, because although we brought spares, we didn’t actually get them in the camera until Edinburgh.

Anyway, that was Norwich. We took an earlyish train to York on Sunday.

Vacation

2006-07-17T23:35:00.000-05:00

We are home from a long long trip. I suppose I am jet-lagged; mostly it feels like total bodily confusion. I am not sure if I am sleepy or not. I feel like I am moving—just a residual sensation from the trains, planes, and automobiles in the last few days. Weird.

It is good to be home. Betsy jumped up and down and cried, and Raphael followed me around singing, and Luigi hid in a corner of the attic and howled, and Ciao Ciao quit coughing for a moment to get petted, and Hank acted nice, briefly. This is why you have cats and dogs—because nobody else will ever, ever miss you so much when you are gone. The entire ground floor smells funny, but I choose to ignore that tonight. Tomorrow I will rent a steam cleaner.

July 1-5 : The trip began inauspiciously. We were leaving at 4 a.m. Saturday. I was covered with poison ivy. Vance looked healthy but he always gets sick on vacations. Friday at 5:30 I pulled something out of the mailbox that said that if I didn’t get certain documents in to social services within a few days, mom’s Medicaid application would be denied. This included things like her birth certificate (last I knew this was locked in a safe deposit box at the bank) and bank records going back far enough that the bank has to order them from the central office, and the like. It being the weekend before July 4, there was no way to get all of this before Wednesday, and that’s when my plane left Boston for a conference in England, and we were supposed to leave in a few hours to go to Maine for the 4th. On top of this, there was an offer pending on my brother’s house—it had been pending for 2 weeks, and we were fairly sure it was going to be completely lowball, but we still hadn’t heard word. And my conference paper was still really rough. But we started out as planned on Saturday at 4 a.m.

We were going to Maine to stay with Dick and Marti (Vance’s folks). Since we left on Sat. July 1st, we drove up 81 and the Taconic parkway because 95 is scary enough on a regular day, let alone the weekend before July 4th. Plus when you go up 81, you get to stop in Frackville PA at the Dutch Kitchen. It was a nice drive. Took forever though. We got to Maine really late and crashed. Woke up Sunday and there it was, Maine. Peaceful. Beautiful. The picture above is the view out of the living room window at Dick and Marti's place. And yes, you Massachusetts friends, we invited you along year after year, and THIS is what you blew off. (Except you Jesse.)

We were there for a few days. Sunday we hung around and relaxed. I went to an auction for a while with Marti but we didn’t see much we wanted. Dick’s brother Bill, his wife Sandy and his friend Marie came over for dinner. Conversation ---as usual with this family—went to politics and since Dick and Bill hold radically opposite views on politics, and the rest of us join in, it was lively. As usual.

Monday Vance and I went to Wiscasset for lobster roll at Red’s Eats. Best lobster roll on the planet. Stopped at Renny’s and bought raincoats. We dropped by Bill and Sandy’s afterward, to talk politics some more (the 5 of us are all in the same hemisphere, as far as that goes) and watch a little World Cup, Marie being really into the games. Hooked up with Dick and Marti and all ate dinner out.

Tuesday was the 4th, which in Round Pond Maine means PARADE. They have a funky, cool parade, very irreverent and idiosyncratic. Very crowded. Afterwards one of Dick and Marti’s neighbors had a little party on the dock. The weather had turned from lovely for the parade to—well, still nice, but different. It was windy and really chilly and a little rainy. The rain stopped before long, and I got to burn my sparklers (I bought boxes and boxes). Marti and Vance and I lit them all, handfuls at a time (ignoring the safety instructions on that one) and it was so entertaining for some reason that Dick is considering getting real fireworks for next year.

Wednesday was the 5th, aka plane time. Vance and I drove to Boston, where we were supposed to catch a plane to NY, where we were getting an overnight flight to Manchester. I was paranoid about traffic, so we got to the airport about 4 hours early, which is good, because bad weather was developing over NY, and the smaller shuttles were starting to be delayed. We managed to get on a much earlier shuttle—close call, we were on standby—and get in to NY. Lucky, since the plane we were supposed to take was delayed so much that we would’ve missed the connection.
Not much to say about the flight. The movie was weak, the turbulence was lengthy but mild, and we got in when we were supposed to. We landed in Manchester, walked to the other side of the airport, and got on a train to Norwich, where my conference was.

I’ll post more later.

Discuss amongst yourselves

2006-06-27T21:49:00.000-05:00

Name 3 songs you wish were written about you. I'll go first.

1) "Love Street" by the Doors. Yes, I want monkeys and diamond studded flunkies, and I want to live down the street from the store where the creatures meet, and I hope that image doesn't seriously disturb any of my friends.

2) "You look like Rain" by Morphine. Great love song. Really. How many love songs start off by calling someone intelligent, and by praising "experience"? So much better than being like cherry pie, or a taco, or praising youth and youth alone (not that there's anything wrong with it, but everyone gets youth by default, and loses it by default, so as a basis for love it just seems weak) or whatever else love songs these days are saying.

3) ok, I'm still working on this one. I was considering "Little wing" but the female described is just a bit too fey.

pretty things

2006-06-27T21:41:00.000-05:00

I am not going to have much to say until I get more dissertating done. So instead I bring you ... highlights from my garden.
These are my bleeding hearts, and why that term is used as an insult is beyond me. I have been putting a few of these a year out front but this year I added 25 more, so by next year the front yard wil be dripping with excess sentiment come April or May.

Dissertation update

2006-06-23T12:45:00.000-05:00

And while I'm at it, I think the chapters about failure, narrative, identity, and art are done. The one on place should be done today, after I take a brief walk back through Durkheim, having ditched my consideration of Marx as a good way to explain fierce attachment to place. Then maybe I'll write the intro and redo the chapter on process and consider what to do with the 4 mutant remaining bits-that-aren't-chapters. and then conclude something, and I'm done, I hope.

Defending Betsy

2006-06-23T12:31:00.000-05:00

It falls upon me to defend Betsy, who has been slandered elsewhere and who, being a dog, can't blog in her own defense (no thumbs, you know). Poor maligned Betsy.

Look at this dainty dainty dog. Could this sweet refined thing keep anyone awake all night?

The lies some people tell.

the six impossible things

2004-09-17T12:36:00.000-05:00

From Alice through the Looking Glass

`I can't believe THAT!' said Alice.
`Can't you?' the Queen said in a pitying tone. `Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.'
Alice laughed. `There's not use trying,' she said: `one CAN'T believe impossible things.'
`I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. `When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.