Team Saucebox Headquarters

Our new hobby

2011-10-19T19:36:00.009-04:00

The end of the summer has been just lovely. I understand that it's now October 19th and it does not make sense to be talking about the summer anymore. But as previously noted, one's sense of time is destroyed by long-distance relationships and this continues to be true now that we commute only 130 miles. I moved back to New England at the end of July, and summer sort of started for us then. It took us a little while longer to figure out that we should be enjoying ourselves on weekends instead of dealing with the mess resulting from multiple moves. It took a little longer than that to get over the rockiness of transitioning to another new way of life. (Transition is not my strong suit, which is a shame given how much of it I do.) Eventually we settled into a pattern of doing awesome things on weekends, alternating between New Hampshire and Maine. There was, for example, some boating with cousins Brian, Brenda, Maya, and Isabel.

And we got to spend a little time with Kendra, Jake, Hazel, and Lucy, who came our way to attend the Common Ground Fair (that's residual facepaint on the girls' faces).

Here they are doing a last clean-up before getting in the car to begin their move to Germany. We wish them a great adventure and hopes their next move brings them closer to us.

What we've been really giddy about lately is hiking.

Both Jeff and I have done our share of mountain-climbing in the past, and neither of us had done any of it for at least a few years. Now that I'm in New Hampshire part-time the White Mountains have become a convenient day trip, and we decided that we should get back into it. We had a an early chance on a visit to Mt. Desert Island, where we climbed the Beehive--a super short, steep climb with fantastic views over the ocean.

This was the kind of climb you could do in worn-out sandals and the skirt you happened to be wearing, though I don't particularly recommend it. It made us feel great. So the next weekend, when we were in NH, we decided to drive up to the Whites for a real hike. I remembered enjoying Mt. Whiteface back when I used to climb mountains with some regularity, so we drove on up. It took us awhile to find the trailhead; it took awhile longer to figure out we were at the wrong one. By the time we got to the mountain it was getting late in the day. I did not want to give up the hike after driving all the way up there and getting our boots on and everything. And Jeff did not want me to be angry and sulky, which I might possibly have been just edging toward. So we came up with the inspired solution of taking the quickest possible trail up the mountain: the Tom Wiggins trail, nicknamed the "Fire Escape" and marked with a sign: "Not Recommended. Steep and Loose."

Up we went. Up, up, up. It was steep, and it was loose. Tom Wiggins suffered some verbal abuse. At last we met up with the main trail, which according to my map meant we were only a thumb-width from the summit. Up we went some more. I was sure we were very close, but our predetermined turnaround time arrived. I saw reason. We turned around.

There were, needless to say, no photos.

The following weekend we were in Maine and decided to try out a more moderate hike in the Camden Hills, which are the only bits of elevation close to us. The hike was pretty but views were limited.

Jeff did not understand why I was taking pictures of the fog. Jeff does not have a blog.

This particular spot is called "Ocean Outlook," but we had to take it on faith until a couple weeks later when we tried the hike again.

They aren't kidding. The Camden Hills turned out to be a delightful surprise, with quick hikes that you can do in a couple of hours, go have lunch, and still have time to go home and do your taxes (for which you have filed an extension and which have suddenly come due). The hikes are short but steep enough to feel like a workout, and the views are just spectacular.

Last weekend we tried another Camden Hills hike, called Maiden Cliff. We opted for the slightly longer (maybe 2 mile) Scenic/Ridge trail and again, not kidding. The views are even better than Ocean Outlook.

The cliff is named for one Elenora French, a twelve-year-old who fell off it in the nineteenth century. If you come to visit, we'll probably take you to see her big steel cross.

(That would be because the hike is spectacular, not because of the cross itself.)

I am beginning to realize that it's now really fall, and am remembering why people love fall in New England so much. It turns out that I have not spent an entire fall in New England since 2003. That is a long time to be away. It's not a great year for foliage, thanks to Hurricane Irene, but there are still the wonderful bursts of color that make just driving around a delightful experience. And we'll be seeing the trees from above as often as we can.

It's nice to be here.

Catching up

2011-08-27T17:04:00.007-04:00

The summer's already gone by somehow, and as often happens with summers most of the things I planned to do never happened. These include going to the beach, hiking and camping, spending time with friends (there's been some, but not nearly enough), a bunch of work-ish stuff, and writing a blog post. So, now that we're having the convenient kind of hurricane in which you can't leave the house but the power's still on, here you go.

At the beginning of June, I defended my dissertation. This was not a well-documented experience, photographically speaking. (I do hope it was sufficiently documented otherwise to make my PhD valid.) Jeff came along with me to Chicago, and he was in charge of photos. So we got this:

That's the room where I did it, folks. And that's my jacket on the chair. It was hot and I never put it on but it made me feel more professional nevertheless. The most painful part of the defense was probably the time when this picture was taken, as we waited for the examiners to show up. I wasn't nervous about the defense, but I did worry a little that they might have forgotten.

Post-defense. The best photo we got. Sorry.

After Jeff went home I stayed in Chicago a bit longer. I got to witness Alistair's first encounter with a Blooming Onion and a Funnel Cake.

He approved, and can now consider himself a thoroughly American (if half-British) child.

From thence, I continued my midwestern junket with a trip to Ann Arbor. I got to see a much healthier Eva and much happier family than the last time I was there, and it was delightful.

Before heading back to Philly I stopped in Chicago for graduation. I wasn't yet eligible to graduate, but I got to see Abigail and Andrea in their professor costumes.

Seven years in the making! It was a cold and miserable day, and graduations are boring, but it was just fantastic to be there to mark the end of graduate school for some of my dear friends.

There was some wrapping-up in Philly (goodbye, Philly) and a move back to Maine for a week before moving in with my parents in NH. From their house it's an easy commute to my new job at UNH and a somewhat longer commute to Rockland, where Jeff remains for the time being. A much improved situation all around. My new job is Assistant Director of the Honors Program, which I am finding a more satisfying thing to write in my email signature than "PhD Candidate." Having glimpsed the abyss that is the current job market, I feel very fortunate to have landed in such a good place.

I've generally been commuting to Maine on weekends (though this weekend I insisted that Jeff drive down--into the hurricane, as he pointed out--to my place). Maine in summer can be magical, and this summer has been lovely. We've had a few weekends of blue skies and blue water, and Jeff experienced the best hamburger in Maine.

The downside to weekending in Maine is this:

Going up with the traffic on Fridays and back on Sundays is something I could do without. But Labor Day is coming soon. And there's still time for a bit more of this:

Books (and a little salad)

2011-06-17T15:48:00.002-04:00

Well, I can't find the cord that connects my camera to the computer. It's probably in Maine. I'm in Philly. So no pictures today, just some updates and ramblings.

Most of the pictures that you're not seeing are from a recent trip to Chicago, where I went to do my dissertation defense. I still have some cleanup to do and some small changes to make, but overall this means that I'm done with grad school. There is debate over whether I can be called "Dr." now or whether I get the title when I get the diploma, but you all should feel free.

A strange thing happened almost immediately upon finishing the dissertation. I started to want to read again. For several years now my recreational reading has been limited to The New Yorker and whatever I found on the internet when I wanted to procrastinate. Sometimes I picked up novels that I felt would be useful to my work, and pretended that I was reading them for fun. And they were fun. When one spends most of one's time reading eighteenth-century literature and current scholarship, it doesn't take much for a book to be compelling by contrast.

I thought this might change eventually, but it happened so fast. A few days after I submitted my dissertation draft I was reading The New Yorker over breakfast, and couldn't stop. Normally, I read until I finish my tea, then leave the magazine on the table so I can finish the article later (they are long). But this time, though the article I was reading wasn't particularly great, I wanted nothing more than to read and read and read.

When we went to Chicago for my defense, Jeff and I stayed with our friends Tom and Elizabeth. In addition to being terrifically hospitable, Tom and Elizabeth have a great collection of popular literature. I picked up Twilight and got a good ways into it, but that book is just boring. Then I borrowed the first volume of The Hunger Games to read on the train to Ann Arbor. Not boring. So exciting, in fact, that I got very little sleep for the next few days because I couldn't doze off while reading it. As noted above, I am not used to exciting books.

I still wasn't sure that I would be up to reading a real grownup book. I'm not at all ashamed of enjoying YA fiction; one of the perks of getting a PhD in literature is feeling above other people's standards of literary taste. But this, in particular, I think I can explain. One thing I learned from my dissertation about novel-reading is that plot is important. This isn't what we all learned in school. For the most influential twentieth-century critics, character was king and symbolism was queen. The books that won prizes and got taught in schools established deep psychologies for their main characters and built up complex figurative structures, both of which offered puzzles for students and critics to solve. (At my high school people referred to "DHM," or "Deep Hidden Meaning," as the primary goal of English classes.) I like solving that kind of puzzle. But character- and symbol- puzzles don't suck me into a book the way what's going to happen does.

A lot of the most lauded contemporary fiction falls into the category I call "books about ideas." I don't like these very much (for reading; they're great for teaching and studying). Then there's the category of "books about relationships," which is somewhat more to my taste (incidentally, these books tend to be marketed to women). For "books about stories," you often have to go to YA or genre fiction (mysteries, sci fi, etc.). In theory, I should like genre fiction, but in practice I've hardly read any of it, and the specimens I've come across have just been too simplistic for me. Recommendations welcome.

So, that's why I'm happy to read YA fiction. But now that I'm emerging from grad school I want to get engaged with adult fiction too. Fortunately, I had a starting point in mind. A high-school friend of mine recently published a novel, to much acclaim, and I had resolved to read it when it came out last year. So I made Richard Harvell's The Bells my last (probably) purchase at the Seminary Co-Op and started reading it on the plane back to Philly.

I loved it. Even though there are no killer hornets or fights to the death, I had to force myself to put it down in order to sleep at night. The plot isn't especially complicated; it's a pretty classic bildungsroman (coming-of-age story), with the twist that the protagonist is a castrato. I think part of the appeal for me was Rich's intelligent use of genre conventions. The story moves through the expected elements--origin, loss, journey, struggle with society and power, aesthetic and spiritual development, love--in such a way that the conventions provide a firm structure. Because of this foundation the book can make surprising moves without losing the reader's absorption.

The book is about music; the blurb on the cover of my edition says "The Bells does for the ears what Perfume did for the nose." And I would like to describe the writing as musical, except that writing described as musical is so often overwrought and annoying. This book is musical in that the rhythms of the language carry the movements of the plot without drawing particular attention to themselves. There's not a lot of tricky, fancy language, but there is a kind of steady beat and a sense of controlled dynamics. I think the book might also borrow structure from opera--it's written in 3 "Acts." I didn't notice the opera-theme until Act 3, when there's suddenly a sort of comic interlude. Ah, I thought, it's like an opera, and this is whatever you call the funny bit after intermission. Perhaps because I'm not very knowledgeable about opera, this structuring didn't work for me as well as the bildungroman. But it did make me eager to go watch some of those eighteenth-century Italian operas. (Jeff has consistently refused to do anything opera-related, even when we lived in a city with fantastic student tickets, so this might have to be a solo project. Unless any of you want to watch operas with me.)

And just like that, I'm in love with fiction again. I highly recommend The Bells, and will happily lend my copy to the first person I see who asks for it. And I'd like your recommendations for books you think are awesome. I'm out of New Yorkers (they go to the Maine address so I only get them in batches) and am tired of reading cookbooks over breakfast.

I'll post a what's-next update and maybe some photos soon. And I will leave you with an addendum to the high/low salad discussion: one of Errol Morris's Miller High Life commercials, which are fantastic even if Miller High Life is not.

More fun with salad (& class)

2011-04-02T16:07:00.005-04:00

Now that you like salad, you may be wondering what your salad has to say about you. In 1949 Life Magazine published a chart that let readers identify their social classes based on their preferences in, among other things, salad. This was mostly a joke, but remains kind of true, as you'll see if you take a look at the chart.

Here is the salad category.
Highbrow: Greens, olive oil, ground salt, ground pepper, garlic, unwashed salad bowl
Upper Middle: Same as highbrow but with tomatoes, avocado, Roquefort cheese added
Lower Middle: Quartered iceberg lettuce and store dressing
Lowbrow: Coleslaw

Whenever I start to feel too uppity, I remind myself that I like cheese on my salad.

The whole issue is available on Google Books and I heartily recommend it if you have some time to waste (the "High-Brow, Low-Brow, Middle-Brow" article starts on p. 99).

(Click to enlarge)

How To Like Salad

2011-03-19T12:25:00.004-05:00

A year or so ago, Jeff and I found that salad had taken over from the quesadilla as our fallback dinner. This is not because we were on a health kick, or because we suddenly decided a bunch of greens made a satisfying meal. We weren't even sick of quesadillas (though maybe the dearth of decent tortillas in midcoast Maine had something to do with it). We stumbled on a secret, and then we started to like salad best.

Here is the secret: potatoes. Salad with roasted potatoes (see appendix) is delicious, and much more filling than salad without roasted potatoes. I can't remember whether we came up with this idea ourselves or stole it from Cafe Miranda, where they serve a salad with french fries in it called "Gnu Evan's." (Jeff recently learned that the dish is named after the owner's son, and was invented in order to get the kid to eat salad. It works for adults too.)

I should specify what I mean by "salad." Mostly I mean arugula. We use other greens when they are better or more available than arugula. If we have nothing else in the house, we'll just have greens with a vinaigrette, and ideally potatoes. Otherwise we add some combination of:

fruit: chopped up apples, dried cranberries, bits of orange
nuts: try toasting hazelnuts until they're kind of black, then chopping.
cheese: goat, feta
onions: I like them pickled or soaked in the vinegar from the dressing for a bit
avocado
vegetables that are in season (really no point in winter tomatoes, right?)
croutons made of leftover bread
protein: poached or fried egg, fish sticks
leftovers: meat, pasta-and-sauce, cooked vegetables, whatever

I like to use kind of a light hand--I don't want too much stuff in my salad. Jeff tends more toward the baroque. But like most other things it's about balancing the flavors and textures. It's nice to have something crunchy, whether nuts or croutons or apples. And I like something sweet (fruit; balsamic vinegar or honey in the dressing) or mellow (avocado) to balance the acid of the dressing and the spiciness of the greens.

Don't knock the fish sticks. They make life way easier and tastier. If you need to feel classy, you can buy breaded fish fillets (that was our gateway--then we realized fish sticks, at least the better ones, are pretty much the same thing). For three nights in a row last winter we ate a salad of arugula, green apples, onions, and croutons with a honey-mustard vinaigrette and fish sticks, and it was the best meal ever, every time. Then we ran out of fish sticks.

Oh, and about the dressing. It really is a lot better if you toss the salad all together with a little dressing. I know this is easier when it's just two of us than in a family setting. It also makes it more important to be good at estimating your salad amounts, because dressed salad won't keep. But if you can manage it, it's worth it. We usually make a vinaigrette--it's easy enough, you can customize it to the salad of the day, and if you make extra you can keep in in the fridge and shake it up the next few times you have salad. I like to make it with a whisk; Jeff makes it with our wand mixer, which keeps it better emulsified (a blender would work too). You can find recipes everywhere, but here's one tutorial.

Now I must tell you another secret: carrot-ginger dressing (recipe below). Salad with this dressing becomes the best thing you could possibly imagine eating. In more than one instance I have debated with myself whether I wanted to eat more salad with this dressing, or save room for homemade ice cream. And it was not an easy call.

Jeff tells me that this dressing tastes like one served at a place called Dojo's in New York, which he ate at a lot in his vegan days and still gets quite misty over. We don't make it all the time, but when the craving hits nothing else will do. One night last week Jeff was making salad for dinner. I had fallen asleep (sometimes it gets really late when Jeff makes dinner). And Jeff did not know where to find the recipe for carrot-ginger dressing. "It's not on your blog," he said grumpily, after making a vinaigrette instead. So I am putting it on my blog so he can find it and you can too.

Carrot-ginger dressing*
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen, who adapted it from Gwyneth Paltrow's detox plan
Serves 4, but you might as well double it

1 large carrot, peeled and roughly chopped
1 shallot, peeled and roughly chopped
2 tablespoons roughly chopped fresh ginger
2 tablespoons white miso
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
Sesame oil or tahini to taste (1/2 tsp to 1 T, depending on how you feel about sesame)
1/4 cup canola or neutral vegetable oil (not olive oil)
2 tablespoons water

Whiz the carrots, shallot and ginger in a blender or food processor until finely chopped. Scrape down the sides, then add the miso, vinegar and sesame oil. While the machine is running, slowly drizzle in the canola oil and the water.

Excellent on lettuce, avocado, onion, and of course potatoes. Not so great with fruity or weird things.

*Can anyone suggest a better name for this dressing? We are pretty bad at naming things; we already have "favorite fish" and "delicious oranges" in our repertoire, and this usually goes by "awesome salad dressing." Help?

Appendix: Potatoes

Here is how I roast potatoes. Cut them into cubes, if you want to make a lot, or slices, if you want to be quick. Peel them or not, as you like. Rub a cookie sheet with olive oil, put the potatoes on it, and toss with more olive oil, salt, pepper. Spread out in a single layer or close as you can get. Cover with foil. Put in oven at 400, 450 if you're in a rush. Cook about halfway (~15-30 min; less for slices) and take off foil. After ~10 min turn them over. When they're crispy enough, eat them. The best way to reheat is to stick the potatoes back in the oven or toaster oven for 10 or 15 minutes--they won't recrisp in the microwave.

Virtual Garden

2011-02-08T16:04:00.005-05:00

Having lived all of my life in places that get gray and cold in the winter, I have gradually accumulated a few strategies for muddling through until spring. These include:

a puffy coat
hot toddies
blaming things on the season, not on my choices in life
Smartwool
wallowing
botanical gardens

Botanical gardens are the best thing about winter in a city. In general I think city winters are harder than rural ones. There are mitigations: in the shoveling and driving categories, for example. But there are no bright, beautiful snowy fields or silent woods or streams running under snow to make winter lovable. Botanical gardens are a real escape. They are warm and humid and full of beautiful plants.

Last weekend Mom and Dad and Julia and I all went to the botanical garden on the Mall in DC. ("Your tax dollars at work," I heard the front-desk attendant telling a visitor who expected to have to pay.)

In case you can't get to a botanical garden of your own, here are a few photos. A few more weeks now...

Act II

2010-12-22T16:19:00.014-05:00

Last weekend, Jeff and I passed the one-year mark of our life in Rockland. I haven't exactly been overwhelming anyone with my posting rate since then, so you may still remember this entry, in which we resolved to look at our small-town adventures as episodes in a warm-hearted comedy. It seems time to update the story.

The thing is, not many comedies involve one of the leads taking a one-year position 500 miles away from the other. That sort of thing wreaks havoc on dramatic arcs. The character drives back and forth, up and down the coast; the couple talks on the phone a lot; they carry on with their work; they wait for the end of the year and the next phase. There was in fact a movie last year with Drew Barrymore in it called "Going the Distance," but I didn't see it. Did you? Probably not. Who would want to see a movie about a long-distance relationship? It might work for some bleak existential and/or postmodern art film, but a comedy? Please.

Living in two places has some odd effects. I'm always looking for something that I'm sure is in a particular drawer or cupboard and finding that it is really in another drawer or cupboard, 500 miles away. At the grocery store I can remember what food I've already bought, but not what state I was in when I bought it, which can lead to excesses of arugula (if such a thing is possible). My sense of time gets stretched and compressed and rearranged by the alternation of here and there. I can't remember which news I've told to whom.

And so, please cut me some slack if what I'm about to tell you is something I should have told you in person.

A few months ago, Jeff and I decided to skip to the end of the movie and get married. (Note that health insurance coverage doesn't figure much in comedic plots either.) We are planning to have an actual ceremony/party at some point, so we kept it minimal: just signed some papers, and paid the insurance company. We did manage to get our parents together for the "signing."

Our moms were the witnesses, and we had some Italian wedding cookies. It was nice.

For those of you who dread wedding invitations, I wouldn't be too worried. We originally thought we'd do something next summer, but that's looking unlikely now: I'm scheduled to be in Philly through the end of July, and (fingers crossed) might possibly start a job in another part of the country in August. So the estimated date is...later.

Let's see, what else has happened? Weddings, babies, visits, travels. Working. Job applications. A lot, really--but nothing with an arc! And not enough photos--there are entire babies missing from my collection. Nevertheless, here's some stuff to look at. Maybe you can put on some nostalgic music and pretend this is the "snapshot" sequence that plays under the credits?

Summer: Kendra, Lucy, and Hazel in NH

And this happened to my tire.

September: my cousin Denise's wedding. That's her in the white dress...and that's Jeff, officiating. (And that's the best photo I got.)

Sisters:

October 3: Levi was born! And, because of the whole marriage thing, he is officially my nephew. Unbelievably, I seem to have taken absolutely no pictures of him. I stole this one from Katherine's blog.

Also in October: Julie and Miguel's wedding.

Eliza and Emilia were flower girls...

...but Katherine had to take over some throwing duties.

Emilia was happier doing the can-can on Uncle Jeff's shoulders.

Nephew RJ was born December 3.

More pictures to come, I assure you.

Last weekend, in Marblehead: Abigail, Jeff, and baby Lucius!

A lovely beginning to a season of visits with family and reunions with friends. Happy holidays, everyone!

Summer, part 1

2010-07-28T19:08:00.013-04:00

It's been a busy summer so far. Mostly, I moved to Philadelphia. But somehow other things happened too, some very nice summer days that produced pretty photos.

We helped Mom and Dad launch the boat.

It went smoothly all the way to the mooring.

That same day, we bought a car.

The tide had dictated an early launch, so we hadn't gotten much sleep. I think it helped. Getting worn down by the car dealer goes faster when you're exhausted. Anyway, we are very happy to have joined the ranks of the air-conditioned, power-steered, and automatically-shifted.

At some point we went to a wedding.

Then there was the 4th of July. Attempting good citizenship, we went to the parade.

There were many fire trucks. There were also many other trucks that were undecorated with any chicken wire or tissue paper and so did not fit my definition of a "float." Jeff's firm had sponsored the cub scouts' float, which was a float indeed. This photo doesn't even show the canoe.

There was lots of old-timeyness.

And, of course:

After the parade we drove down the peninsula to the Olson House, which you know from this painting:

Mom and Dad had sailed up and anchored right behind Christina.

I only hit one lobster pot.

Jeff's favorite thing to do on the water is this:

The dinghy looks so innocent, doesn't it?

But the next day it got loose and started all kinds of trouble. Fortunately it was returned by a kindly boater.

Mom hasn't caught anything yet.

Still, 4th of July wasn't over. We went to Portland for their always-amazing fireworks, which were even better than usual because they were accompanied by the Symphony.

Jeff bought Eliza a light-up spinny thing

and, once the fireworks started, made her a noise-cancelling headband.

And then there was a bunch of packing and moving and new-lifestyle-beginning, but it will be a bit longer before I have enough of a handle on things to tell you about it all. I'm heading back to Maine this Friday, and should be there for a good part of August. More anon!

Travels

2010-06-10T16:50:00.011-04:00

With less than a month left here in Maine, time is moving both fast and slowly. Another week is gone by, and another, but each day I'm sitting in the house, chipping away at bits of work while the hours creep by. I once heard someone characterize academic life by saying "the days are long but the months are short." Or maybe it was weeks, or years. All true.

I headed to Philadelphia about a month ago, to find a place to live and meet my new colleagues. This is going to be my home:

Because I'm too lazy to figure out how to draw on the photo, you'll have to imagine an arrow pointing at that top window in the red building. My apartment is the top floor. It's nice, and even better, furnished. It's also walking distance to my office, which is on the Penn campus, but far enough away that I should be undisturbed by partying young folks.

The city is very walkable in general, though less so after I spent a lot of time getting lost in new boots on the first day there. I really liked it, anyway. As nice as Maine is, it felt good to be back in a city, especially at lunchtime.

Noodles! I've missed you!

Of course there's lots of historical Americana stuff, which I guess is kind of my thing, now. (At least professionally. And some of the furniture is pretty great.) In a lot of places the old and new are mixed together in cool ways, which keeps it from feeling too stuffy. At the Constitution Center building, for example:

Apparently it has something to do with sports?

The juxtaposition of the historical and the tasteless made me feel right at home. I was hoping that when I got back I could take a picture of the old-timey sign that says "Thomaston 1605" in front of the marquee of the Beverage Barn that advertises "More than 30 wines under $5!!!" but it turns out they're a little too far apart. (And the Beverage Barn is a pretty good source for wine, I have to admit.)

Another overlap: this is at Penn...

and this is down the block from us in Rockland.

Maybe the love of Robert Indiana (sorry, the Love of Robert Indiana) is just universal.

From Philly I went on to Ann Arbor. Jen and Kris's daughter (and Ben's sister) Eva was diagnosed with leukemia last fall, and I wanted to lend a hand. The situation is sad and scary, but Eva, who will be 2 in August, is still a happy, wonderful little girl.

When I arrived, Eva was recovering from a round of chemo, so she (and a parent) were stuck in the hospital. Fortunately Eva had no trouble finding fun things to do.

She could even hear the ocean.

But before too long, Eva was healthy enough to go home for a few weeks. It was great to be able to go outside, and for the whole family to be together.

Eva's just been readmitted for another--hopefully the last--round of inpatient treatment. If you want to help out, you can donate blood, and join the national bone marrow registry. Nora N-E has also been coordinating donations for take-out meals, for those of us who live too far away to drop food off in person. Contact Nora or me if you want to contribute. And send lots of positive thoughts Eva's way.

The last stop on my trip was Chicago. I didn't do such a good job of picture-taking there. But here's baby Alistair!

English '04 has been doing an excellent job of reproducing this spring. Good job, Tom and Elizabeth and Abigail (and Jeff, honorary cohort member). Sadly, I left town just before baby Lucius arrived, but I am going to steal a photo of him anyway.

This reduces me to blubbering idiocy. In a good way.

There really is no good segue from that...but on my last night there, I had a fabulous dinner with Annie and Grant. That night, Chicago was really showing off.

All those margaritas we had while waiting for our table didn't hurt the effect, either.

I miss Chicago...and I miss the folks in Ann Arbor...and I'm going to miss Maine soon...and who knows, in another year maybe I'll be missing Philly.

uphill

2010-04-30T12:41:00.015-04:00

Back on Easter Sunday, Jeff and I decided that being heathens who don't particularly care for jelly beans, we wouldn't make the 2 hour drive to celebrate with family. It was one of the first gorgeous days of spring so we drove up to Camden Hills State Park for a little hike. We went up Mount Battie, which being only about 700 feet tall probably doesn't count as a mountain at all for those of you from the west. You do have to climb all 700 feet of it, since you start at sea level...unless you take the auto road instead. The best part is that at the top, there's a gorgeous view over Penobscot Bay

AND A TURRET.

From April 2010

Beat that, fancy actual mountains.

When Katherine's family came up to visit the following weekend, we wanted to take them up the mountain. What with the 4-year-old and the 1-year-old and maybe a pregnant lady or two (just kidding, only one)[clarification: I am not the pregnant lady], we planned to take the auto road. But when we got there, we found a locked gate. So we started walking up the road.

There was some degree of resistance

From April 2010

and a few drastic measures

From April 2010

but in the end, there was a turret.

From April 2010

We spent a little while looking at the view

From April 2010

walking around

From April 2010

and attempting to get a family photo.

From April 2010

Pretty soon everyone wanted lunch, so down the mountain.

From April 2010

With a major team effort, we made it to the bottom of the road without a single meltdown. And just as we reached the bottom, they opened it up for cars. It would have been nice to know that in advance, Camden Hills State Park. Still, some chowder and a nap or two smoothed everything out into a delightful adventure.

So, speaking of delightful adventures.

Since moving here in December, we've been dreaming of summer. We talked about spending all our weekends on mountains or boats, and having a grill and a container garden and lots of cocktails (and lemonade, for Jeff).

But then someone offered me a bunch of money if I'd move to Philadelphia for a year. So I'm off again in July.

To be honest the money isn't really the big draw; there are always tables to be waited if necessary. More importantly, the fellowship I've been offered--at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies--will be a big help for me career-wise. There aren't too many jobs available in English departments these days (here my colleagues are giving a little snort/chuckle/sob at the understatement). I'm committed to following this career path at least up to the point of going on the market next fall; after that, depending on whether I'm offered a position, Jeff and I will have to figure out what to do. Academia seems to take for granted that jobs come first; in order to stay in the profession, a lot of people live in long-distance relationships for years, even permanently. That option isn't on the table for us, but we may have to put up with commuting for another few years.

We went ahead and started our container garden anyway. Since it snowed yesterday, the garden currently lives indoors with the non-edible plants and my messy desk.

If you see Jeff this summer, will you please do me a favor and remind him to water the plants?

Pick-me-ups

2010-03-30T18:59:00.010-04:00

March is not a good time to be in Maine. We've actually had it pretty good, with no blizzards, and hence less mud than is probably normal. But it's been raining, raining, raining. [EDIT: now that I'm finally getting this posted, the rain has stopped, and it's gorgeous and sunny. Still, a few pick-me-ups never hurt anyone.]

Here are three things that are helping us get through until real spring.

1. Syrup
March is, traditionally, the time to tap your maple trees (warm days and cold nights makes the sap run). Global warming has screwed this up somewhat, and a lot of syrup production has moved northward, but we still have "Maine Maple Sunday" at the end of March.

It's basically a day when a lot of farms and sugarhouses put on pancake breakfasts. It's the kind of thing you do when you have children (or hang out with child-having people). We looked at some cows, packed in some pancakes, and then everyone went home for naps.

2. Tomato-Coconut Soup
This is our favorite soup right now. Well, when Jeff makes chowder that is our favorite soup too. But this is more of an everyday kind of meal, that I can make when I don't want to go to the grocery store (=always). It's basically a can of tomatoes, a can of coconut milk, and a ton of flavorings.

This soup does rely on a good dose of spices that you might not have on hand; in a pinch, you could probably get by on ground cumin, garam masala, and mustard seeds alone. In fact, the last time I made this I accidentally used cardamom instead of coriander and it was still just as good. At any rate, it's worth a a trip to your local ethnic grocer to buy those huge bags of Swad spices that cost about $2. They'll last forever, and you'll be able to make this soup and be happy.

When Jeff finished his soup the other day, he got a faraway look in his eyes and said, "That was the best soup I've ever had." It should be noted that Jeff tends toward the hyperbolic on the subject of food. Yesterday I bought him an Italian sandwich and he had to come running out of his office to kiss me, he loved it so much. UPDATE: Last night, after a dinner of tuna melts at our respective computers (romance!), Jeff said, with great enthusiasm, "That was the best f***ing tuna melt EVER." I'm beginning to suspect that this is a strategy to make me feel better about having to do all the cooking. If so, it's working. Nevertheless, take his word for it on the soup.

Caveat: the measurements aren't too precise, especially with the spices, which I tend to dump right out of the jars. You might want to go easy on mustard seeds--they're a little bitter, and probably not everyone's favorite. But they're so good in this soup! Everything else, I think, is very flexible.

Tomato Coconut Soup
Serves 4-6

Saute in olive oil over medium heat:
1.5 onions—finely chopped
3 T minced fresh ginger
3 garlic cloves—minced

When onions are soft, add:
1 big can whole tomatoes, chopped, with juice*
1 can coconut milk
1 coconut-can water
1 tsp. salt
1 T cumin
2-3 tsp. coriander
dash or two of red pepper flakes

Simmer for 20 min. or so.

Puree (with your wand blender, or in a blender).

Add:
2-3 T brown sugar*
Salt to taste

If you want it to be thicker, let it cook a while longer. I like it on the thin side.

When ready to serve:
Melt 3 T butter in a small skillet over medium/high heat.
Add:
2 T garam masala
1 T mustard seeds
1-2 T cumin seeds

Cook for a couple of minutes, until fragrant.
Stir spice mixture into soup.

We like to serve this with a scoop of brown rice and a sprinkle of cilantro or parsley.

*Note on tomatoes: I love Tutto Rosso tomatoes, the ones that say "plum-shaped" on the label, and I haven't tried this soup with other brands. They are on the acidic side, so if you use a different brand you might want to cut back on the sugar or add some vinegar at the end.

3. This video

We recently remembered the existence of this delightful short. Watch it and you will be happy.

(If it gets taken down, just do a search for "Pixar One Man Band.")

Camera Practice

2010-02-09T18:30:00.002-05:00

As you may remember, we got a new camera a few months ago. It does lots more stuff than our old camera--especially when there isn't a ton of light--and takes pictures much faster, yielding fewer grotesque faces. But still we were taking a lot of out-of-focus, grainy pictures. When we finally had a weekend when we weren't traveling and no one was visiting, I sat down with the camera, the manual, and a ball of yarn to figure out how it all worked.

(The ball of yarn was my practice subject, once Jeff left the room, and didn't scowl or whine one bit. Somebody I know should take lessons.)

I managed to figure out which version of the autofocus works more or less like a regular focus, and how to set the white balance, and how to tell the camera what should be exposed. Then, seeing as we had all that time, we went for a walk around our new neighborhood and I tried out my new skills.

So now I can show you a bit more of what it looks like in our new home.

Dreaming of summer...but it'll be too cold to swim then, too.

End of the line.

Or is it the beginning?

This is my favorite, I think. It's in close-up mode. Here's a question: does anyone know how to get a shallow depth of field on a not-very-fancy digital camera, other than using close-up mode? It will tell me what the F-stop is, but it won't let me change it, as far as I can tell. The only thing I can change directly is the ISO. So I guess I could dial it way down, but it might just slow the shutter speed instead of increasing the aperture. I can also tell it to over- or under-expose; maybe if I corrected the exposure afterward I could change the depth of field that way? Maybe I need to use the Portrait setting? Has anyone figured this out?

These are some cement silos. That's all I know. They seem to be on land owned by Dragon Cement, a Thomaston company, so perhaps they are actually full of cement. Anyway, I think they're awesome.

That one I took by accident because I was wearing gloves and also had numb fingers. But I might like it the best of the Silo Series.

I did not succeed at taking any focused pictures of the seagulls.

Stuff on land that belongs in the water.

Moon.

And, just because I had these on my camera: some pictures from Eliza's 4th birthday, a couple of weeks ago.

There was a snowstorm.

Better than cake.

2010!

2010-01-04T20:08:00.013-05:00

Happy New Year! Happy not-being-the-00s-anymore, too. Sheesh. The more retrospectives I heard/read, the more glad I am that the decade is over. So, onward to the, er, tweens?

We have a new life now, too. The other day I was craving Thai food and COULD NOT FIND ANY. That is very different. (Jeff is picking up some tonight, though, now that the only restaurant within 30 miles is open.) The ethnic food options are not so good here in Rockland, Maine. Did you know that tortillas could be terrible? I didn't, until we bought the Mission brand at Hannaford. We are going to stock up on our next trip to Portland, because without tortillas we will either starve or get really fat eating Amato's sandwiches.

Jeff has decided that we should think of ourselves as characters in a warm-hearted comedy with a happy ending. So when a couple of city folk show up to a small town, and can't find their ethnic food of choice, and their cell phones don't work, and the man arrives at work to be told that his only local colleague is quitting, and the woman sits in the house all day trying to write a dissertation hundreds of miles from a research library...well, they just need to meet some lovable locals and learn the truth about The Way Life Should Be.

The movie might have to be called something like Fish Story, because what we do have here is some excellent seafood. Rockland is still a very active fishing town, as suggested by the Christmas tree:

In case you can't quite tell what's going on there:

Apparently we're in a fight with Gloucester, MA to see who has the biggest lobster trap tree. Lobster makes people competitive.

Naturally, I decided to take on a seafood-related challenge for New Years. I decided to make this fancy scallop soup. I hesitated at first because it requires a fish stock, for which one needs fish bones. You know, the kind you're supposed to "ask your fishmonger" for. But then I realized that there's a fishmonger I could ask practically across the street (we'd gotten cod there for Christmas--it's really a terrific fish market).

So I called up and said I was looking for "fish bones and heads" for stock; did they have any? "Ayuh," said the man (seriously! he did!), "I'm cuttin' cod latuh." Okay! So I drove around to gather the rest of the groceries. There was no thyme or parsley to be had. According to the grocery-store cashier this had to do with the oncoming snowstorm; people were stocking up on herbs early. I got some sad chives. Then I dropped off the groceries and strolled up the street to get the scallops and fish bones. They were in an opaque bag, and heavier than I expected.

After I got home and brushed off the snow, I pulled out this:

That is not what I expected bones to look like. Or feel like: heavy and slimy and cold and very unwieldy. How was I supposed to wrestle that into a pan? The idea of parsley began to seem absurd, anyway.

I spent a few minutes wondering what I was doing alone with a half-dismembered fish in my half-unpacked kitchen in the middle of a snowstorm on New Year's Eve. I considered throwing the thing out, then realized it would have to sit in a trashbag on the porch all weekend because we still didn't have a dump sticker.

Then I remembered to live up to my warm-hearted comedy. I changed into a machine-washable sweater and a waterproof apron, found the box labeled COOKBKS, and located a battery of knives. I hacked away at that thing--fish spines are tough--until I could bend it enough to wedge into the stockpot, and got rid of as much gory stuff as I could. I also poked out one if its eyes, accidentally. You will be glad to be spared pictures of this process.

Well, now I have a lot of fish stock in my freezer. And we had a very rich, mostly herbless scallop soup and watched Netflix while the snow came down.

I'd spent the whole week working on unpacking, and was very tired of it. So because the fish stock didn't take up the whole day, I'd decided to make bagels for the morning.

I used this recipe and they came out nicely, and kept me away from the boxes without much guilt.

I've never lived in New York and don't have a sense of what a "real" bagel tastes like, but Jeff said they were pretty close. Then he admitted that despite having eaten a lot of NY bagels his Platonic ideal might have originated in Saugus, Mass in the early 80s. Good enough.

He did not want to be photographed whilst capering his bagel.

We've done a lot of other stuff lately, too, but I find that I'm not very interested in recounting the move out of Chicago apartment (but thanks SO MUCH to the friends who helped us!) and the long drive, which for various reasons got extended across several days, and it was very cold and we'd managed to pack away all our hats and gloves. We were also trying to keep the houseplants alive, so there was a lot of late-night loading of bell carts with paper-swaddled pots, and some mystified night concierges. There was absurdity. There might have been a few tears. We got here in the end, and Mom and Dad came up to help us move in. The plants are doing OK, considering. As are Jeff and I.

And there was Christmas, too. It was really nice not to be flying in for a week and having to squeeze everything in. And if you're feeling jaded about Christmas it helps to have an almost-4-year-old around to be wide-eyed and thrilled about everything ("Look, this one is for me! Mommy, look! Oh, it's a notebook! I got a notebook! Uncle Jeff, Santa brought me a notebook!").

Emilia isn't really big enough to understand presents, but she found plenty with which to amuse herself (and us).

Sadly I don't have any good pictures from my family's Christmas, because it was almost dark by the time we got there and I'm no good at using the flash. We had a regular old fun time, and good food, and no one made fun of the blue sparkly tights I'd picked up at Target (not being able to find my box of tights) until the next day. A good jolly holiday.

This post has been all out of order, which seems to me an accurate representation of the last month. Now I think we're ready to settle into the new year.

We wish you all a happy new decade!

New Place

2009-11-17T22:39:00.004-05:00

We're moving! Not quite yet--in about a month. This past weekend we went to Maine to find our new apartment and try to get used to the idea of a very different life.

Jeff is going to be practicing law in the adorable little town of Thomaston (pop. 2,788). For a long time Thomaston was the site of the Maine State Prison, but a few years ago the prison relocated to Warren. As a result the town seems to have lost some population (it was 3,748 in 2000) but gained some credibility as an up-and-comer. Conventional wisdom is that the region is transitioning (not always willingly) from industries like fishing toward more of a tourism and arts economy, like the one a few miles up the coast at Camden and Rockport. Thomaston is a little to the south of most of these developments, but we (and Jeff's employer) are banking on an imminent boom in demand for legal services.

By the way, if you're looking for something to do on the internet, I recommend searching for your town on http://www.city-data.com/. So many graphs!

Unfortunately we didn't get many pictures of the area itself, though I could show you a lot of the local rental stock. According to Wikipedia, "Thomaston is an old seaport popular with tourists and noted for its antique architecture." At least in our price range, that antique architecture translated into some pretty unlivable apartments. It didn't take us too long to decide that we wanted to live about 5 miles from Thomaston, in the relatively metropolitan town of Rockland (pop. 7,436). As small as it is, Rockland has a lot going on. There's a respectable arts economy, and absolutely amazing food. We loved the people we met there. Jeff re-dubbed the town the Land of Rock, and I really don't think he was being more than minimally ironic. We're completely sold on Rockland.

There's no denying that it will be a pretty big change from Chicago. I found these graphics pretty stark:

So, we'll blend in easy. Beyond the demographics, we'll have to readjust to the driving lifestyle, which I've enjoyed being (mostly) free of. On the other hand, we'll be within driving distance of lots of family and friends. We even got to see some folks during our apartment search. Jeff's friends Steve happened to be in town for a conference (see? stuff happening) and stayed the night with us.

From apartment hunting trip

That's in the morning, while waiting a very long time for our coffee and breakfast. Whether that represents small-town pacing or just a bad service experience remains to be seen, but it made us pretty cranky. Fortunately, we found our beautiful apartment shortly thereafter and so remained on good terms with our new town.

From apartment hunting trip

See the pretty kitchen? And all the natural light, on a cloudy day? And there's a wonderful loft, from which you can look out at the harbor.

From apartment hunting trip

That's where you'll stay when you come to visit us. We made "room for guests" a non-negotiable for this housing search, because we're hoping that our terrific location will entice friends from far away to come spend some vacation time--or dissertating time; writer's retreat, anyone?

See, the water is just a few blocks away!

From apartment hunting trip

I don't know why these photos are in some kind of widescreen format. We're still figuring out the camera, as you can see.

The same afternoon, Jeff's parents came by for lunch at our new favorite market/cafe, Sweets and Meats, and then his sister Katherine brought Eliza and Emilia to stay the night with us. So our apartment got its first visitors,

From apartment hunting trip

and a good dose of cuteness.

From apartment hunting trip

Cuteness, in fact, was in abundance.

From apartment hunting trip

But back to the apartment: it has a deck, too.

From apartment hunting trip

We're going to have a grill, and some herbs!

Another perk: we're just down the street from Sweets and Meats, so we set out to introduce the girls to some delicious whoopie pies and/or pastrami.

From apartment hunting trip

Unfortunately it was Sunday, and the place was closed (that small-town thing again). So we had to go back to the excessively leisurely coffee shop instead. Well, we'll have plenty of chances at the whoopie pies next month.

If you'd like to see more of the apartment or the cuteness, clicking on any of the photos should take you to a picasa gallery. I'll try to keep posting as things happen. Meanwhile, Chicago folks, we only have 4 weeks left, so let's make some plans!

We Got a New Camera

2009-10-29T00:03:00.008-05:00

Jeff's birthday was this past Sunday, and I didn't know what to get him. Jeff has an annoying tendency of having already bought the things he wants. So on Saturday I put on my shoes and announced that I was going out to get a birthday present. "Want company?" said Jeff. "Sure," I said. And that's how he got a very special birthday present.

Sometime this summer Jeff got this idea that we should get a new camera. I have a little digital that works perfectly well, provided you don't want to take pictures indoors, or of things that move. (I also have a decent film camera, but I never use it anymore.) Jeff didn't have a camera of his own, but considering that he doesn't take pictures this didn't seem to be a problem. Seriously, even when he borrowed my camera to go visit his little nieces, he failed to take any photos. He says it's because there's too much delay on the camera. I say, psshaw. You know that line about bad craftsmen.

Anyway, sometime in the course of playing with other people's much-nicer cameras on various visits, Jeff got convinced that things like speed and versatility are important in a camera. I maintained that as childless people we didn't need a decent camera at this point, and besides we couldn't afford any of the ones I wanted. But Jeff's stubborn.

So, on the day before his birthday, we had to go to Costco, and guess what they have there?

The Canon PowerShot SD1200 IS, if you were wondering. More charmingly known as the Digital Elph.

We spent the rest of the weekend taking pictures in low light (amazing!) and trying to learn all of our new camera's features. This resulted in a lot of grainy photos of one another doing boring things.

Jeff refers to this as "getting his Axelrod on." And I know...my mustache is upside-down. Like I know anything about mustaches.

We did some outdoor pictures, too. There I am reading the manual again.

Two of us together!

With foliage

Museum of Science and Industry, Lake Michigan, Promontory Point

And Jeff, back in his natural habitat. This one's my favorite.

Between taking pictures and plugging the camera into the TV to watch slideshows (add a soundtrack, and your grainy boring photos become hip!), we were well entertained all weekend. But since it was a birthday, we also ate a lot of food.

That's Jeff's birthday cake. He's had the same birthday cake since he was about 10. It is, in my opinion, a perfect cake for a 10-year-old. I could only handle about 2 bites, but fortunately Jeff can eat a lot of cake.

We also had some finer fare--back to the grainy photos.

At this point we were enough over our initial giddiness to feel pretty stupid taking pictures of our restaurant food. So we put the camera away. But who knows? Now that he has the gear, Jeff might turn into a photographing fool. Watch out.

Summer trips: Maine/New Hampshire

2009-09-08T19:54:00.011-04:00

I'm not from Maine. I know this is confusing to people who met me in Chicago--I lived in Maine before I moved here, and for a few years I went back there every chance I got (because Jeff still lived there). But I'm from New Hampshire. Jeff is from Maine. When you're from New Hampshire or Maine, this seems to matter. I'd say Maine looks down on NH more than NH looks down on Maine, but at least we all unite in looking down on Massachusetts. And I won't even get into the definition of being "really" from a place, since neither Jeff nor I can claim generations of ancestors in the same spot.

For now, we're effectively tourists. At least, it feels a little like that when we visit in August. Generations of vacationers have discovered that late August is the time to visit "Scenic New Hampshire" (formerly, "Live Free or Die") and "Vacationland" (formerly, part of Massachusetts. Ha!). Not so many mosquitoes, sunny days and cool nights, deep blue skies...if you have a choice, that's when to go.

That's not why we visited in late August this year. It was the only 11 days this summer that I wasn't teaching, was the real reason. Also, our friend Carrie conveniently picked one of those 11 days to get hitched, on the beautiful island of Islesboro. On the mainland, it was a foggy day, but the sun shone over Islesboro. Here is the lovely couple on ferry, coming back from the island.

As many couples do, Carrie and Rob had distributed cute photos of themselves around the reception hall. There were Carrie and Rob making a snowman, making Thanksgiving dinner, in Seattle, in Maine, in Thailand...having very few cute photos of ourselves, Jeff and I felt negligent. We were inspired to make a point of taking pictures when we go places.

The first one came out nicely (if I do say so).

But on the whole, this project is harder than it looks. We got up the gumption to ask someone to take our photo at the gorgeous reception site,

but we both had smiling problems. Also, when you ask people to take your picture they inevitably put your heads in the middle--which violates the only rule I absorbed in photo class: don't put the head(s) in the middle. Sigh.

As usual we didn't get to see enough of Carrie (and our new friend--her husband Rob). We headed back down the coast, to find some cute children to play with.

I got to meet Jeff's niece Emilia, who's now 3 months old (here, with her mom, Jeff's sister Katherine)

and Jeff introduced Eliza to the famous Tony's Bismark

(then left the parents to deal with the sugar rush).

We headed back north to Five Islands, to take another couple photo--thanks, Dad!

I got some much-needed boat time

with Jenny and Reggie,

Laurel and Cheez-It (official food of family boating),

Mom,

and Dad.

(There's me.)

You know how eventually you just have to accept that there are some things you will never, ever understand about your partner? Well, here's one: Jeff prefers--actually prefers-- the kind of boating that requires manual labor.

He doesn't mind rowing (doesn't mind! rowing! insane), and likes kayaking a lot (no photos, unfortunately), but his real love is canoeing.

He got to indulge a little bit when we went along with Katherine and her family to Ogontz, which is where Katherine and Alex got married 5 years ago.

We took Eliza on her very first canoe ride. Here, the pre-boating safety session:

(for comparison: Jeff instructing our friend Emily, when we kayaked on the Chicago River a few weeks ago)

Eliza was less enthusiastic than Uncle Jeff about canoeing.

(awesome photo by Katherine, who knows even more about how to take photos than that you shouldn't put heads in the middle)

She had less mixed feelings about swimming,

especially if there was an opportunity to kick water at Uncle Jeff!

At night, when the kids were in bed, we enjoyed grownup pastimes, like cribbage and bourbon. And...

These days, the children of responsible parents aren't allowed to consume the amount of sugar in a s'more in an entire month. So we had to take care of the marshmallows ourselves.

We did a good job.

Summer trips: Ann Arbor

2009-09-05T11:32:00.012-04:00

On Monday Jeff and I arrived back in Chicago after 10 days in Maine and New Hampshire. The trip wasn't long enough, either to spend time with everyone we wanted to see or to get our fill of New England in August. But on the other hand, being able to take the bus home from the airport, then run out for milk and bread and takeout--all within 3 blocks--was a nice consolation. Maine's tagline is "The Way Life Should Be," which I am mostly on board with, but in an ideal world public transportation and decent Mexican food would also be included.

First, a flashback to earlier in the summer, when we took a trip to Ann Arbor to visit Jen, Kris, Ben, and Eva.

From Ann Arbor

Jeff gets along well with kids.

(If you have ever seen Jeff with children, you will be chuckling at the extreme understatement.)

From Ann Arbor

In addition to playing with children, Ann Arbor offered lots of unusual (to us) experiences, like backyard soccer.

From Ann Arbor

(Eva wanted to play too)

From Ann Arbor

And there was bocce

From Ann Arbor

and exotic plants. If you go to Ann Arbor, we recommend that you check out the Botanic Gardens.

From Ann Arbor

They have carnivorous plants.

From Ann Arbor

One of them tried to eat Jeff's sunglasses, to the delight of all. (Mouseover!)

In addition to great gardens, Ann Arbor also has the best bagels we've had in a very long time. And, complementarily, amazing salmon. But we were not so impressed with the Wave Field.

It's nice and all. We just...thought it would be bigger.

Perhaps living in Chicago has warped our sense of proportion? ("Wish it were bigger" is not something we often say about things--whether public art or portion sizes--around here.)

East Coast vacation updates coming soon! (Really soon, maybe even this weekend. Not the kind of "soon" that means sometime in the next three months, like usual. Seriously.)

Great American Cities

2009-07-06T18:47:00.021-04:00

Our summer started off with a visit from Mom and Dad in early June.

We showed them around our apartment

But that doesn't take very long. So we went out in the rain to see Millennium Park.

Fortunately, we have a large collection of umbrellas. Mom thought these were marvelous things. New Hampshire doesn't have much of an umbrella culture; people wear raincoats and drive cars. But umbrellas aren't the only exciting things in Chicago:

We also have public art that lets you make use of umbrellas!

And, of course, the Bean.

That's a tiny Bean in a scale model of the city at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, across the street. The Bean is officially named Cloud Gate but people only call it that if they're being ironic. I also learned from Wikipedia that it is located in the AT&T plaza, between the Chase Promenade and McCormick Tribune Plaza and Ice Rink. As far as I can tell those corporate sponsorships aren't getting much mileage. Does anyone even know they exist? I didn't.

We all knew that the Bean was great for photos, but did you know that you can also shelter from the rain underneath?

I'm guessing that most Chicagoans have never gotten close enough to the Bean to see underneath (because then people would think we were tourists). It's neat! Looking up:

We also found this lovely prairie garden behind the wonderful new Modern Wing of the Art Institute.

Eventually it cleared up, and we headed over to the Blues Festival.

Mmmm, sun. Can you tell I haven't gotten much of it this year?

The next day we went for a walk in Hyde Park to see the historic sites from the World's Columbian Exposition. Actually, there aren't many artifacts left, but there is this replica of a statue.

One of our favorite things to do in Chicago is to go to the Lincoln Park Zoo (free!) and see the monkeys.

One of the chimps figured out that he could pull a tree branch through the cage and eat the leaves.

Monkey see, monkey do...

It was clearly a novelty: most of the chimps tore off big bunches of leaves, ate a few, let the rest drop, and tore off some more. Except one, who hung out underneath and collected them. Not hard to believe that these are our closest ancestors.

A couple of weeks later Jeff and I got to be the ones experiencing a new city, when we went to St. Louis for Melissa and Chris's wedding. We love the Bean, but you've got to give St. Louis props for having its public art visible in almost every view.

The wedding was in an art gallery that used to be a police station, which made for odder things in the backgrounds of pictures. Jeff and I calculated that this was the fifteenth wedding we've attended together, and it definitely had the quirkiest photo situation of them all.

There was this holding cell:

And, at our table, the head of John the Baptist, in his platter phase.

In this representation, St. John has been lured to martyrdom by a saucy hipster librarian.

Much prettier:

Congrats, Melissa and Chris!

We spent the next day checking out St. Louis. If you didn't know, St. Louis is the original home of peanut butter, the ice-cream cone, and Tums. It also features the Anheuser-Busch brewery and a whole lot of red hats. The Cardinals were playing at home when we were there, and literally every conversation we overheard was about baseball. It made us a little nervous.

St. Louis also has a very special kind of pizza.

There's Jeff, wooing his breakfast. Jeff loves St. Louis pizza. Here's the Wikipedia description:

The definitive characteristics of St. Louis-style pizza are a super-thin yeast-less crust, the common (but not mandatory) use of Provel processed cheese, and pizzas cut into squares or rectangles instead of large pie shaped slices. Provel is a trademark for three cheeses fused to form one (provolone, swiss, and white cheddar), used instead of (or, rarely, in addition to) the mozzarella or provolone common to other styles of pizza.

I like this detail:

St. Louis style pizza is unique even when compared to the Chicago-style thin crust pizza in that it is also cut into squares and is referred to as "party cut".

Those three-bite squares do make it easy to have your own little pizza party, even when it's kind of your breakfast.

But then we had to get serious and go learn things about St. Louis, the Arch, and Westward Expansion.

We thought the best part of the Museum of Westward Expansion was the old-timey gift shop. But the Arch is really all it's cracked up to be.

Jeff isn't a very good sport about tourist photos. He blames this on having grown up in a tourist town (though what icon you'd want to pose in front of in Kennebunk, I'm not sure...cutouts of the Bushes?).

I gave up after this one.

Near the Arch is the courthouse where Dred Scott was tried (and let go--St. Louis has the good guys in that story). It's not an actual courthouse anymore, but it has an incredible collection of dioramas.

We learned that in the olden days, there was a lot of: men; drinking on the street; and telling the Native Americans what's what.

Here the Americans are acquiring Missouri and the rest of the Louisiana Purchase from the French, or Spanish. It's kind of confusing. This is the sort of stuff they neglect to teach New England kids (i.e. anything that didn't happen in New England).

The Europeans (that's safe) have twirly mustaches and earrings and military discipline; the Americans are ragtag and dour.

I especially liked these two.

If those people aren't respectable, I don't know what is.

What do you think they would have made of this?

There's Mom and Jenny, marvelling at Times Square. Last weekend the whole family met up in New York--the first time we've all been in one place since Jenny's wedding, nearly 3 years ago!

Unlike a certain other person mentioned in this blog post, my family are very good sports indeed about posing for tourist photos.

In addition to umbrellas, we got to use trains

and dodge traffic

and eat delicious Moroccan food

and see people sing and dance...at the same time

We also got to visit with Aunt Sally, Uncle Doug, and Cousin John, and I was able to squeeze in quick visits with my college friend Nora, as well as Alex (from high school) and his girlfriend Jina. And then, back to Chicago, in time for some urban grilling with Tom and Elizabeth on our rainy 4th of July.

(Note that Jeff is timing the steaks with his smartphone. Not exactly young men and fire...but the steaks were delicious!)

For the rest of our summer travels, we're planning on Ann Arbor sat the end of this month and Maine/New Hampshire at the end of August (wedding #16!). I'll also be spending a lot of time in Schaumburg, but I don't think that counts. Let me know if you need anything from Ikea.

I still have a blog

2009-05-07T20:20:00.004-04:00

Well, gee, it seems to have been about 4 months since I last posted. That is a third of a year. Where has it gone? How has nothing happened that seemed worth posting about?

I will swiftly move on from that question in order to avoid slipping into existential-crisis mode, which is becoming a default state these days. Instead, I'll just try to think of some things to tell you about. I'm hoping that there will be more post-worthy things in the near future--on Sunday we're going on one of Paul's "Pocket Guide to Hell" tours about the Columbian Exposition so I'm anticipating some fun Chicago facts!

Now, here's something important:

Hello, Emilia! She was just born on the 5th, which makes her a Taurus. Tauruses are good people, in my experience (hi Mom! Laurel! Kendra! Patrick!)--you know, dependable. Emilia is also Jeff's niece, another category of good people, in my experience (hi Eliza!).

Jeff gets to go meet Emilia next weekend, because Katherine (mom/sister) conveniently has a graduation from her MSW program (cough*overachiever*cough). So you may be seeing some more photos soon (if Jeff remembers to take any this time).

Though not on the same scale as a new niece, Jeff also thinks you should watch this video.

It's like dancing, but on a bike. I'm personally kind of hard to please/easy to bore with tricks-on-bikes stuff, but this one is mesmerizing. (Except, don't watch it if you're feeling kind of woozy. There's a lot of fish-eye. Speaking as someone who knows.)

The other thing I thought I'd tell you about is our AMAZING SALSA recipe. We started making our own salsa last summer, and it's hard to imagine we ever bought it from the store. Homemade salsa is easy! Delicious! Cheap! (I'm starting to get the feeling that I'm trying to make up for lack of content in this post by using exclamation points. And capital letters, now that I think of it. Well, I'm just going to go with it, if you don't mind.) And it turns a steady diet of quesadillas into something special. We will never go back.

We make two kinds of salsa: green and red. This is what the red looks like.

The green looks pretty much the same, just green.

Here is how you make them. I'm not so good with recipes, but it's a forgiving process.

Red Salsa

1 big can tomatoes*
1/2 onion
big handful cilantro
jarred hot peppers, to taste**
1-3 T orange juice concentrate, to taste***
cumin, to taste
salt, to taste

Process tomatoes, onion, cilantro, and peppers in food processor until desired texture. Stir in other ingredients, tasting appropriately. I usually use large quantities of cumin and salt, in the end. Also sometimes I add more onion or cilantro, or peppers. Really the can of tomatoes is the only definite.

*Jeff's partial to the Muir Glen Fire Roasted, but sometimes the smokiness is a little much for me. If you're using whole tomatoes you may want to leave most of the juice in the can so the salsa doesn't get runny.

**I've been roasting my own peppers and storing them in vinegar (vinegar makes hot peppers less hot! Who knew?), but just recently learned that they SELL hot pepper in vinegar at the store. However, the ones we got (the kind of cheap Serranos that are packed with carrots) were not that flavorful, just very spicy. We're not spice fiends, so we might need to find another alternative--suggestions? The homemade ones are really delicious, but somewhat labor-intensive. And PAINFUL, if you don't wear gloves. I recommend wearing gloves.

***Seriously. OJ is the magic ingredient. We learned this from a jar of Frontera salsa. Take it from Bayless. You could also use lime juice or vinegar plus sugar, which is what we used to do in our benighted pre-OJ period.

Green Salsa

1-2 pounds tomatillos
big handful of cilantro
1/2 onion
jarred peppers (raw jalapeno, serranos, etc are also fine in this recipe)
salt

Peel husks off tomatillos, and boil them until they turn dull-colored (10 min.) Drain, then put them in the food processor with everything else, and adjust flavorings as above.

The Green is my favorite; I think Jeff likes the Red. But it's nice to go back and forth, so you can appreciate each one even more.

Anyway, do it. It will change your life. Or at least your Mexican dinners. For us, that's pretty much the same thing.

Back soon, I hope!

another request for cultural assistance

2009-01-23T17:57:00.003-05:00

My sister Jenny, who's a high-school history teacher, sent me an email this week. Her school is revising their English curriculum, and she wanted some suggestions for 20th-century female authors who are "good, readable, and interesting."

Now, as someone who used to be a high-school English teacher, and is currently a professional student of literature, you might expect me to have some opinions on this matter. Probably I would have, back when I was a high-school English teacher. But if you've asked me for book recommendations in recent years, you'll already have heard that studying literature has more or less killed off my ability to read literature like a normal person (if normal persons even read literature anymore? all the literati say they don't, the literati not considering themselves normal, because they're snobs. But I listen to their podcasts anyway.). I read a lot during the day, so when I get home I want to cook, or knit, or watch TV. Or I read a magazine, which isn't the same. Lately I've even been doing crossword puzzles!

So when people ask me "have you read any good books lately?" I get all embarrassed and muttery, and this email gave me kind of the same feeling. And after I went though a cranky round of "What kind of authors? For what group of readers? What part of the 20th century? Why specifically women? Are they supposed to address women's issues? What genre? You probably want novels, don't you? Why don't you say novels if you want novels?" and so on, I got to thinking, "Why on earth do we teach novels in school anyway?"

Then I was shocked at myself.

My high-school teacher self had some answers on hand: novels inculcate a love of reading, which is useful. And novels contain lots of good lessons that they can get across in more complex and effective ways than other forms (same argument for poetry).

But I'm currently studying novels in the 18th century, when they were considered frivolous entertainment, would never, ever have been taught in schools, and were both kind of scandalous and wildly popular. Even though they were long and boring!

I've had the experience of trying to teach a great, fun, non-boring novel with relevance to the students' lives and yada yada--and watching it become a total slog. It's a problem: just assigning something as work is enough to make it feel like work. So why ruin fiction by making kids read it (at an annoying group pace, with a quiz coming) and claiming that it's good for them? Why not allow them to read novels, as a treat? It would be easy enough to fill out the curriculum with other literary forms.

So the answer I wanted to give was, just get a lot of books and let kids pick the ones they want to read. (I had a lot of success doing this. People like the things they pick out for themselves, even when they're books.) But obviously that's not going to happen. And, you know, I'm glad I was made to read The Brothers Karamazov in high school. Besides, I'm not ready to commit to my ban-novels-from-the-curriculum position, because it seems kind of reactionary, even to me. So I did come up with a pretty standard list of books for my sister (most of those books are quite good, when they're not being taught in high schools). And then I thought, maybe I should throw this question out to people who actually read! And aren't curmudgeons.

So that's my request: books for the high-school curriculum! And you can go beyond 20th-c women writers if you want, because I'm curious. Plus, you never know, I might be back in the HS classroom one of these days. And if I am I want to have the very coolest list of books to slog through.

holidays, and a new year's request

2009-01-02T20:27:00.008-05:00

Jeff and I are settling back into life in Chicago after our holiday trip, 10 days divided among Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. We came back on the 31st to still-living plants, an empty fridge, and a pile of parcel slips in the mailbox. (To date, we've gotten one package out of three. The south-side postal service might be called sub-par, by a polite person.)

Poor Laurel had to go surfing on St. Maarten's on Christmas so couldn't make it to our party, and Julia could only come for a couple of days. Still, we managed to squeeze in our family ornament-shopping tradition on Christmas Eve. The shop we were trying to buy ornaments in closed early, so we made our choices quickly, then went and had a beer.

After that calm moment I drove back up to Maine to join Jeff's family for a Christmas Eve/Hanukkah dinner, followed by a present-wrapping extravaganza that might have been frenzied except that there was a power outage. Wrapping by the light of the menorah had the effect of slowing things down. So it was late when we got to bed, but Santa got his job done anyway.

Eliza got her three requests: a dollhouse, a cash register, and some books. In return she (mostly) tolerated an orgy of picture-taking, but did insist on personally vetting some of the images.

Uncle Jeff decided it was time to introduce Eliza to Hungry Hungry Hippo, even though the box said she wasn't old enough.

Maybe she isn't, quite. Or maybe she just figured out that it's much more efficient to get the marbles with your hands.

Another fun toy of the morning was Nancy's new Flip--an amazingly easy-to-use camcorder. Jeff was immediately enthralled.

And put it to work, filming the star of the day. (No, it wasn't Santa...)

After all the presents were opened and the brunch consumed Jeff and I drove down to NH for my family's Christmas.

We'd teamed up with Jenny, Reggie, and Jules to get Dad some fancy pots. (New Englanders, have you been to the Calphalon outlet in Kittery? It's an amazing, wonderful place.) We put them all in a big, big box.

Then we sneakily suggested that we all open one present early.

Once Dad had opened up his new, shiny cookware, we dispatched him to the kitchen to make the Christmas dinner. The rest of us proceeded to enjoy another early-opened present: a cocktail book we'd gotten for Jenny and Reggie, but which was plenty of fun for the rest of us too.

After a few fancy drinks and a scrumptious dinner, we moved on to the rest of the presents.

Mom gave us cookie jars filled with very delicious "Ellen Cookies"

And Dad had made us each a beautiful cutting board out of pieces of wood left over from various boats.

The cookies have all been eaten, but I haven't been able to actually use the board for cutting. It's too lovely.

I got Mom some materials for making cheese.

Other than Ellen Cookies, Mom doesn't cook much, but because cheesemaking is more like science than cooking, it seemed likely that she'd enjoy it.

See, science.

There's the bacteria...

And the final product! We made a quick, soft cheese to start with, and it was totally delicious. I believe mozzarella is coming up next. By the time I go back next she'll probably be doing fancy things with mold.

After Christmas Mom and Dad headed up to 5 Islands for a few days, and I got to spend a night with them (and Mom's cheese).

In the morning there was snow--so quiet and pretty.

Then it was time to cram all our new gifts into our insufficient suitcases and make our way back to Chicago, just in time to start the new year.

Waiting for us was the above, my Christmas present for Jeff (too heavy to truck back and forth!). 2009 is bidding fair to be the Year of Beef Stew chez nous.

Speaking of the New Year...

I remembered recently that a couple of years ago Jeff and I had made year-end playlists of the songs we'd been listening to in that year. And then I realized that we couldn't possibly do that this year: I won't tell you just how many songs I could come up with for 2008, but I'll admit that they can be counted on one hand. While this may be a symptom of us getting old and out of it, it also has to do with the fact that there was an election this year and our ipods got filled up with Rachel Maddow and Countdown (for Jeff--too shouty for me!), on top of Radiolab and The Bugle and all our usual podcast favorites. But to the extent that there was time for music, we sucked at paying attention.

So, with-it friends, we need your help! You know that there comment function, the one none of you ever use? How about trying it out in order to let us know what music was awesome this past year? Or, if you're with us in being off the music wagon, tell us about whatever you've been listening to that doesn't involve pundits. We would be so, so grateful--and you would start the new year with Good Music Karma. Who doesn't need some of that, in These Tough Economic Times?

As I anxiously await your suggestions (come on, somebody comment, or I'll be embarrassed) I wish you a new year full of cheese, and cocktails, and hippos, and everything that makes you happy. Here's to the best of all possible 2009s!

the weather, and other seasonal musings

2008-12-08T17:13:00.006-05:00

The weather report for today said "ice pellets." I haven't actually seen any: it was doing a kind of cold drippy thing when I was last outside, and now I'm studiously avoiding windows on the grounds that if we're to be shot with ice pellets, I'd rather not be aware of it. And then the economy keeps coming up with new drippy and icy precipitates to throw at us. I'm trying to ignore those too. So it looks like a good moment to remember some cheerful holidays. And as it happens, I have a few pictures of cheerful holidays that I haven't gotten around to sharing.

Jeff's birthday was, oh, a month and a half ago now. So hardly breaking news--but who needs breaking news right now?

Here is Jeff on his birthday.

Really, that's his cheerful face. He is very excited because 1. we're about to go to dinner at a terrific restaurant, and 2. he really, really loves the new tie his remarkable girlfriend made for him. Not that he's worn it since then or anything. (Not that I've noticed.)

Making the tie involved making a tie-shaped pattern of holes in one-half of our collection of fitted sheets (as well as our entire mattress collection). Jeff hasn't noticed this yet. Shhh.

Then, there was Thanksgiving. Jeff's parents were so obliging as to fly out from Maine to eat turkey with us. It was delightful to see them, as well as our other charming guests:

Clockwise from left: Grant, Annie, Ficus, Don, Laura, Nancy.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Jeff presided over a dramatic plume of steam

and the nicely-burnished turkey waited patiently to be ~~hacked into pieces~~ carved.

Now, allow me to draw your attention to that Mason jar full of milk. That's what it is: milk. Why, you might wonder, do we keep our milk in a Mason jar? We don't normally, it's just that the plastic container fell out of the freezer door and smashed on the floor and we had to transfer the surviving milk...well, no, we don't normally keep our milk in the freezer, either. It's just that OUR REFRIGERATOR DIED. RIGHT BEFORE THANKSGIVING. WITH THE TURKEY IN IT.

Ahem.

Murphy's Law struck hard this year. Last year, the timer/meat thermometer melted, but nobody cares about that now that we've hosted Thanksgiving without a working refrigerator. Fortunately our managers let us use the refrigerator in an empty apartment, so we could be reasonably sure of the safety of the turkey. And we made a makeshift cooler by putting a big bag of ice in the freezer, and stored some things on the fire escape (though it was maddeningly nice weather--too warm for proper refrigeration). We made do. No one has reported any poisoning. And we got a new refrigerator, which might, by virtue of not being 20 years old, lower our power bills a bit. So all's well that ends well.

We did have a delicious dinner (even though I managed to forget that you need 2 sticks of butter to make a cup...but again, when you don't have a refrigerator, everything gets put in perspective). I was especially proud when people had seconds of Brussels sprouts! I've been on a quest to redeem Brussels sprouts from the fact that they're kind of gross. I don't know why I've taken this up as a cause. It might have to do with being contrary. But I like them this way--which we served at Thanksgiving--and this way--which we didn't, because it has bacon in it, and we were feeding vegetarians. I think I need to back off the Brussels sprouts for awhile, though. Jeff's been very patient but I think he's reached his sprouts limit. And so have I, frankly. I am thinking of trying instead to convince Jeff that fresh cranberries are not "dumb." It's important to have a goal.

That's pretty, isn't it? Also, it looks like a sun, so it's a cheerful way to counter the wintry mix from the beginning of this post. Other than being gray.

Along the theme of cheerful holidays (also the themes of: postponement; unsolicited knitted gifts; gray), this is a blanket I made for Annie and Grant as a wedding present. They were married in July, but it's awfully hard to knit in July.

I like it because it looks kind of like a sea creature.

Or a wave.

It's especially pretty if you hang it in front of the window. Though that isn't what people usually do with their blankets.

FYI, Jeff and I will be in New England from the 22nd to the 31st, so if you'll be there get in touch! More cheerful holidays to come!

Election Night in Chicago

2008-11-06T16:37:00.003-05:00

Just a few ~~blurry~~ atmospheric photos.

Our adopted city, which we are extra fond of at the moment, is really into color-coordinating its skyline with the closest holiday or event. Sometimes this is confusing (which one is October--breast cancer or gay pride?). Also, you probably saw in the footage from Grant Park that there's a trend for making words or images out of lighted windows. When the Bears were in the Superbowl, the buildings said things like "Bear Down," and the world seemed like a strange place to live. This time, it was "USA" and flags.

From the roof of a South Loop building, we could see the lights from Grant Park.

That green squiggle on the left is one of the helicopters that circled around all night.

Closer:

For all the talk about frozen markets, there were plenty of entrepreneurs ready to take a risk on President Obama T-shirts, hats, pins, whathaveyou.

(So that's what happens when you use the flash.) I especially like the High Life can lurking in the corner. But you know, this was not a drunken crowd. Everyone was incredibly well-behaved, at least when we were there. Perhaps if it had taken longer for the winner to be clear, it would have been a different story. Still, no arrests! No incidents! (This is being interpreted as proof that we should get the Olympics.)

We arrived outside Grant Park just as the victory speech was beginning. It was loud enough to hear, but the crowd noise made it too hard to understand, so Jeff watched a simulcast on his phone. I took atmospheric photos.

We tried to watch the speech when we got home, but I fell asleep, to Jeff's amazement. But it was late, and I was really, really tired because I'd been canvassing in Indiana during the day (it worked!). And I've yet to pull it up, because usually when I have internet I'm in the library and I'm afraid of getting overly teary.

Speaking of teary, Jeff found this on election night as well:

Within 2 notes his jaw dropped, and he said, "Holy [expletive]! They used my favorite [expletive] song ever! This is [expletive] gravy!"

It's true, the song is really [expletive] good. Weepy, though, just to warn you.

Sniff.

Apple Season

2008-10-16T18:18:00.006-04:00

There's something about apples that gets people out of the city and into...well, maybe just the exurbs, but that's something. We took our 3rd-annual CI apple-picking trip this year, and once again avoided the orchards that are most convenient to Chicago (they charge more than $1 a pound! For PYO!) and got kinda lost on the way to Crown Point, Indiana. And once again it was inappropriately hot, so we made the post-picking trip to Steak 'n Shake into an official tradition. If you haven't been to a Steak 'n Shake, it's probably because you're from one of the gray states, which are presumably gray because they're so sad to lack a Steak 'n Shake:

I've been looking at so many color-coded maps lately that this one seems to promise all kinds of sweeping generalizations about the people of our country. However, as I now live in a red state (Steak 'n Shake-wise), I will restrain myself. But what do you think is going on with Louisiana?

We got to see some wildlife, like this crazy spider

And this teeny worm, which Abigail is helpfully pointing out.

Here's Jeff and Jay

and me
and Abigail and Jeff with Taiyyeba and Andrew, the newest CI family members.

We'd had to reschedule this trip because of an inconvenient hurricane, so Tom and Elizabeth had to miss out this year.

Right in time for school starting fall swooped in, and all the sudden the trees changed color and we got to wear sweaters and boots. And umbrellas, which I've developed an unfortunate habit of breaking, even the fancy one that Jeff got at LL Bean. But we got a bit of Native-American-Summer last weekend, when Annie and I hopped a Megabus up to Ann Arbor. Megabus is a really, really good deal, by the way, and very convenient. The only thing is that you might get stuck sitting behind a couple of college kids who are both lovesick and actually sick, and so alternately blow their noses and make out.

But other than that.

Michigan, as you gray-staters may not know, is famous for apples. After we tottered off the Megabus Jen and Kris whisked us off to a local orchard.

Here's our host family: Ben, Jen, Kris, and Eva

If this were a fairy tale illustration, Jen would be a wicked stepmother.

And there's Ben, the brave woodsman, or prince, or whoever could be plausibly lurking in trees in a heroic way.

Mwah ha ha, laughs the apple-wielding stepmother to her old college buddy. Let's see her wake up now!

Wake up she did, though, and Kris and Ben got busy entertaining her.

There's an incredibly strong S-family resemblance. Which is a good thing. Not that an M-family resemblance isn't also a very good thing.

On Sunday we got to be ladies on the town.

I made Eva this sweater (sharp-eyed blog readers will note that it's similar to the one I made for Hazel)
And so Jen let me hold the baby!

She likes to suck on thumbs. And bounce. It's a little hard to get a photo of anyone holding Eva, because they're either in constant motion or covering her face, or both.

All too soon we were back on the Megabus and back to school, and then it rained and there was the umbrella problem, and then I had papers to grade--and, coincidentally, decided it was high time for a blog post!

So there you are. Now perhaps I should figure out what to do with my crisper drawer full of apples. I get a lot done when I'm putting off grading.

What I did on my summer vacation, in 200 words or, um, fewer

2008-08-29T16:25:00.015-04:00

With Mom & Dad on Noctiluca. I acted like a city kid and didn't pack appropriately. Everyone made fun of me. And it was cold!

John & Julie

John & Max

Hannah

Patrick & Peter. Their own idea.

Happy 1st, Caleb!

"Next year, Dad: Frosting."

Hazel's 1st lifejacket

Gwenzi's too.

Haskell's Island

Mom, Uncle, and Babe

Kendra & Hazel, back in England. I made this sweater! [Ravelry]

Milo & Lisa, right before moving to Turkey.

Hot mama, cool chick

Talia treats herself to a mud shampoo.

There were little children all over the place. Not catching, are they?

They do seem to be spreading westwards...

Welcome baby Eva! And congratulations to Jen, Kris, and big brother Ben.

And here's the rest of the September awards roundup (baby-free from here on).

Congratulations to...

...Julia and Valena, both (independently) starting new jobs in DC...

...Jenny and Reggie on their 2nd anniversary, new house, and new dog...

...Elizabeth and Tom on their 1st anniversary, and restraint in not getting a dog...

...Melissa and Chris on their continued stewardship of a lovable-but-challenging dog...and ENGAGEMENT!

Any other news about dogs, babies, and whatnot: you know where to send it.

Comic Interlude

2008-08-20T16:37:00.003-04:00

I've just come back from a 2-week visit to Maine and New Hampshire, about which more later. For now, I offer a Maine-humor fix:

Thanks, Michael M., for the link!

Snapshots

2008-07-28T18:26:00.008-04:00

There seems to be something about summertime that gets in the way of cohesive narrative. I have no story to tell, but I do have some pictures, and maybe with captions that will add up to enough of a story to keep you interested. Especially if I tell you that, like all good novels (and last year's version of this post), this one ends with a wedding!

But it starts with a baby.

Or, not an actual baby, but a hat I made for one. I'll put the details on Ravelry, for those interested, and spare the rest of you. I made this for Jeff's friend Sharon's baby, but Jeff keeps forgetting to send it. If you know a baby who needs a hat, I might give it to her.

For scale:

The babies are popping up like...what's the expression? Mushrooms after a rain? Worms? Preferably something cuter. Anyway, my knitting needles have been busy. I also made a "soaker" for Jen and Kris's new one. A soaker is apparently useful, somehow, when you're using cloth diapers. It's really funny looking....like a woolen pair of boxer-briefs, in a distorted kind of way. I'd show you, but I forgot to take a picture. Jen, if you send me one I'll post it...

Jen, incidentally, made me this.

Isn't that amazing? It even has a pocket inside!

But I'm getting out of chronological order, which is the only kind of order this post has. So, back to June.

My grandmother passed away in June, and Jenny, Julia, and I all went home for her funeral. We had a chance to see a lot of Dad's family, and afterwards got to spend some time with one another. Because it was nearly Father's Day, we all went out for dinner at Saunders, where Julia and Laurel have both worked in the past. They have a deck, which makes for nice photos.

It was supposed to be a disgustingly hot day, but by evening it was cold on the NH seacoast. Fortunately Dad had an extra sweater in the car so Mom could wear his jacket.

Julia was probably cold, too, but clearly didn't want to spoil her look.

And Jenny...didn't like the wine.

It was just a quick trip home, and I'm looking forward to a proper visit--starting next week!

Finally, as promised...

Did I scare you for a second there? No, it's not me that got married. I'm just holding the bouquet I made for Annie out of the ribbons from her bridal shower. (It's a tradition, they tell me).

We had a sort of mini-bachelorette party for Annie at a nail salon the day before the wedding. I was busy most of the time trying to keep the sandwiches and champagne under control, but someone kindly left some photos on my camera.

Sisters-in-law:

Post-polish, Jen, Valena, Annie and I got a little time to catch up.

And then there was the wedding, which was completely lovely. Thanks to Stephanie Z. for these photos.

Gerard was there too!

I know what you're thinking, and those lights sure are nicely draped. (Jen and I did them.)

I love this photo.

The happy couple is off to Hawaii now, so they can't be mad at me for posting a picture of them eating, at least for awhile. Maybe when they get back they'll be too relaxed.

And so, as the "Just Married" on the windshield recedes into the sunset, our story comes to its end. Soon there would be more babies, more knitted objects to write about; more family photos from summer trips to New England. But for now, all was still, with the stillness that whispers "really, isn't it time to go home for dinner?" And with one last, fond glance at these images of the past, we close our computers, and hurry home.

comparative eating

2008-06-29T17:04:00.003-04:00

My life hasn't produced much blog fodder recently. I'm trying to learn to read German, or at least to pass tests on reading German. Turns out German has a whole lot of words in it. Hrrrmph.

The internet, on the other hand, continues to be interesting, and Jeff continues to be good at finding the interesting parts. So if (for example) your go-to online German dictionary is suddenly not working, you might want to check out these photos:

Hungry Planet, Part I
Hungry Planet, Part II

They're pictures of families in different countries, photographed with what they eat in a week. Really fascinating. I never would have guessed how much meat they go through in Australia. Or that bananas (and Ritz crackers) are nearly universal. Or how much candy Europeans eat. Or how shockingly little food there is in Chad. Bonus: it's all in pictorial form, no reading required.

I'd be curious to see what our photograph would look like. We like to think of ourselves as moderately healthy eaters, of course, but depending on the week we might end up with a pile of cans and boxes, with just a wee little corner of fresh foods. A good note-to-self as we go into prime vegetable season.

Look at that, the dictionary is back up. And for some reason my translations have failed to write themselves in the meantime.

Auf wiedersehen!

things yummy and pretty

2008-05-30T18:53:00.005-04:00

It was my birthday last week, and while it should probably have been an occasion to contemplate my new wisdom and take resolutions to stop wearing flip-flops and watching Gossip Girl, it was instead mostly an occasion to eat. Notably, this cake.

(Photos from Andrea)

Jeff claims that he doesn't bake, but when he does it's perfect. I'm not a good baker because I never really believe that instructions have to be followed. Jeff, on the other hand, opens up The Best Recipe Cookbook, carefully reads all their (*cough*fascist*cough*) instructions, and dutifully treks to the store to buy cake flour, measures it out by weight, and bakes the layers one by one in the toaster oven (because our real oven has, as far as I can tell, no temperature control at all). It really was the best cake I've ever eaten.

Complementarily, my other present from Jeff was an ice-cream maker. It's actually labeled an "Automatic Frozen Yogurt-Ice Cream & Sorbet Maker"--with the ice cream sandwiched between frozen yogurt and sorbet, as though to emphasize the potential healthfulness of your homemade frozen treats. Jeff and I, however, seem not to be the target demographic, because we went right ahead and mixed up 5 egg yolks (leftover from the cake) with an unspeakable amount of heavy cream, some sour cream, and comparatively wee portions of milk, sugar, and strawberries.

What I learned from food bloggers: take pictures that are mostly plate. But...look at that chip. I'll never really be a food blogger.

Also because: here's what my bowl of ice cream really looks like:

Mmmmm. It's terrific ice cream. The sour cream and strawberry variety is still Jeff's clear favorite, though I've also tried out spicy chocolate, chocolate chip, apricot sorbet, and mango sorbet. They've all been really excellent, too (among our friends who have tried them out, the apricot has been the champion). Another thing I learned from food bloggers was that I needed this book, which I highly recommend. They have it at the Harold Washington library (though I have it checked out right now, obv.).

The non-eating component of my birthday involved pretty things: earrings from Laurel

flowers from Jenny, Laurel, and Julia

and an ikebana pot from Julia (the brown one in back).

I'm getting quite a collection of these things. I love them. They're the poor woman's vase: they make flowers of small numbers or inferior quality look great. Which means that when your bouquet starts to get droopy, you can split it up into an arrangement like the one above.

You can also take pictures of the flowers. Jeff tells me this is a "wicked girly" thing to do.

But they were really pretty flowers! A few of them are still even vase-worthy.

Well, onto those older-and-wiser resolutions now. If only I knew where to start...

Being the demographic

2008-04-18T16:16:00.006-04:00

There was once a time when I thought I was kind of out of the mainstream--like, I wouldn't have picked me for the average American of my age. This was partly because I was a nerd and didn't think I qualified, but also because, I now realize, it was what everyone else my age was thinking. The current (pre)election may/may not be saving/destroying the democratic party/country, but it has certainly been an eye-opener for me about the strange determinism of demographics.

It's analogous, I guess, to how when you're finally ready to have a kid and give her that oddball name you've been saving for years, everyone else picks the same one--while all the other demographics are going, "Really, Dakota? Madison?" (Coming up: Waverley and Keyon.)

I first became aware of my own demographic identity sometime around Iowa, when I surprised myself by feeling a lot of solidarity with Hillary Clinton (pre-tears, I swear). Turns out this is because I'm a white educated woman with post-feminist guilt, who feels maybe a little weird about not voting for the first serious woman candidate for president. To learn more about my spontaneous, personal, idiosyncratic take on this you could read (for example) this article.

If you think too much about what this says about electoral politics or democracy in general, you will be depressed (no matter what your demographic, I suspect). Jeff recently stumbled upon a much more fun way to marvel at the phenomenon: a correlation between food choices and political orientation. It's way more right-on, and more quirky, than I could have imagined. Try it out: here's Clinton, here's McCain, here's Obama.

If you're wondering, our household politics are summarized pretty well by the fact that when we ran out of olive oil this week, it was a minor emergency--but we got along perfectly well on butter for a few days. Actually, we get along on quite a lot of butter all the time. We proselytize for butter. But perhaps that's because olive oil doesn't need proselytizing? Interpret at will!

Favorites and discoveries

2008-04-07T14:25:00.008-04:00

It's been a long winter here. Friday evening I was so glad to see the sun coming through the window (the open window!) that I was compelled to take a picture of it.

Actually I was compelled to take about 10 pictures of it, trying out all of the lighting presets on my digital camera. But I didn't keep track and so learned nothing from the exercise. However, it wasn't about learning. It was about being Friday and enjoying the wasting of time. It also might have had something to do with the gin.

The reappearance of sunlight has been having the effect of reminding me that it is, in fact, possible to leave the house when not absolutely required to do so. So this weekend we took a break from complaining about not having cable and went out. We do live in a great big city, after all.

On Friday Andrea took us to a Bucktown bar called Danny's, which is one of those places that people refer to as if you ought to know, or at least you would if you were cool. (And that's how I'm planning to refer to it from now on, just to warn you.) And it is a really cool place, with good drinks. Jeff discovered a wonderful beer with a conveniently memorable name: Unibroue. We recommend that you try it out.

In Maine all of the bars serve food, by state law I believe, because Maine cares about your liver. But in Chicago this isn't so common, and after the Unibroue was gone we had to venture out in search of food. After a bit of driving around, we stumbled upon the best cheap Mexican food I've experienced recently. It's called Dona Naty Taco, on Chicago Ave. between Wolcott and Wood. Try that out too.

Thrillingly, the sun came out again on Saturday, and we met up with Annie and Grant waaaaay up north on Devon Ave., which is Chicago's Indian neighborhood. The only place I ever eat up there is Mysore Woodlands, and I don't see any good reason for branching out. After gorging on vadi and dosa and all those wonderful sauces, we hauled ourselves out to buy some spices before the grocery stores closed (we'd meant to go earlier, but weren't quite up to fighting the crowds earlier in the evening). It's worth fighting the crowds, though, if necessary, because...

...it's just so cheap! But there's no way we'll ever use up this amount of spice before it all turns into flavorless dust. To make it last longer I wanted to transfer everything to glass jars right away, and I thought I'd just take care of that before we went to bed. But then Jeff got involved. If it were left to me, I'd just take an old spaghetti sauce jar, put the spice in it, and stick some masking tape on top for identification, thus:

That works, right? But when Jeff hears the word "label" he goes nuts. This is what we ended up with:

(Really, peppercorns? Who's confused about that?)

The jars look very nice (when you open the cupboard to see them), though we still need to get some littler ones for regular use. But it meant a very late night of soaking and scrubbing off the old labels, and printing new ones, and trying to get the turmeric stains out of the table (Comet worked wonders). And all the while we were listening to...commercial radio! Really! Jeff has fallen in love with WXRT, 93.1. He'll sit through long sequences of incredibly bad commercials, incredibly bad DJ patter, and even the occasional Jack Johnson song, in full confidence that the next song will be wonderful. And I'll sit through it all too, less in anticipation of the music than of Jeff's absolutely beatific smile when he hears, say, his favorite song from 7th grade by some band I've never heard of. It's pretty adorable.

In summary, your takeaway message from this post should be:

Danny's
Dona Naty
Mysore Woodlands
WXRT

and...

Come by with your jars if you need a spice fillup!

My Silly Season

2008-03-13T12:46:00.006-05:00

One of you out there (you know who you are) likes to nag me when I haven't been posting frequently enough. Now, I find this quite flattering (my blog matters to someone!) but also kind of stressful (what do I have to write about? Why is my life so boring? Do I even have a life?). And the other day, fretting about this, I happened to be looking through a dictionary and came across the entry "silly season." It means a period when there isn't any real news so there's only filler in the media (like the Christmas season and all those stories about families going to pick out their trees). And was coined in 1871.

By the way, I'd like you to know that I wasn't just reading the dictionary for fun. I was working. Specifically, I was looking up 'singeing' because I didn't believe it had an 'e' in it. Which is kind of dumb, because 'singing' is a pretty different thing. But the dictionary was right there, and it was easier to look it up than think about it. Besides, looking in the dictionary is fun. It has pictures, unlike most of the books I read. For example:

But back to my story. So I thought, ha! Now I know this cool term, and I'll write a blog post about it, and it'll be so clever, because it doesn't have to be about anything! Okay, it's been done before. But I was desperate.

And then, what do you know, "silly season" shows up on the news. I mean, it's nice to have a presidential candidate who reads his dictionary, but it kind of ruined my plan, you know? Thanks a lot, Obama.

Well, let's see. Yesterday I baked some bread.

This is Anadama bread, my family's favorite. It has cornmeal and molasses in it, which is why it looks kind of brown and healthy. And I throw in some wheat flour because I feel guilty about eating bread without any wheat flour (or at least oatmeal or something; cornmeal doesn't count). Jeff makes fun of me for this, but he eats the bread.

I've been on a bread-baking kick for the past couple months. It's kind of because I'm a bread snob. I was spoiled as a kid by having an amazing bread bakery right in town, and then in Portland we had Standard, but in most places, it seems not too easy to get bread that's actually good. I also recently learned some unsavory facts about mass-produced bread, namely that it isn't made like bread, with yeast and rising and all; instead, "mechanical dough developers and chemical maturing agents" can fake the holes, and they add yeast just for the flavor. "The flavor of manufactured bread can sometimes be marked by such unpleasant aroma compounds as sour, sweat-like isovaleric and isobutryic acids, which are produced by flour and yeast enzymes in unbalanced amounts during intensive mixing and high-temperature proofing." Ew.

(This is from Andrea's copy of On Food and Cooking, which we've been borrowing for quite awhile now. Sorry--we'll return it soon! And the stuff about gross bread is here, pp. 543-4. Google books rocks.)

I hope this isn't sounding all I-bake-my-own-bread-holier-than-thou. Generally I think bread is on the list of things that you might as well buy, because it takes a long time to make and half the time doesn't come out that well. It's just my hobby lately. Every couple of weeks I say to myself, "I'm going to go home early and bake some bread. I'll take this book with me, and do work while it's rising." So I go home early and bake some bread and watch TV while it's rising. I make a big batch, and get Jeff to slice most of it up and put it in the freezer (I don't do slicing of bread. Straight lines are not my forte). Then I am happy about my toast for a week or so. Then we go to Walgreens and buy the mass-produced kind again (we're currently in a grocery-store crisis, but that's another story).

Here's another picture of my bread. I was afraid to show you this one because I feel insecure about my crumb. But I do think it's pretty.

This is making me hungry...and gee, there's some of this nice bread, plus peanut butter, in my bag! Happy lunchtime!

Winter blahs

2008-02-14T19:15:00.005-05:00

Remember that hat that was giving me so much trouble? With the rust spots and all?

Well, it continues to be a troublemaker. I wore it a couple of times, and then it got too cold, and I didn't really know where it was for awhile, but figured it was in the laundry basket or something and would turn up as soon as I turned into a tidy homemaker.

While I was waiting for that to happen, I found this along the road on my way to school.

It was frozen solid, but only (apparently) after having been dropped in a puddle, stomped on, run over by a bike or stroller, and buried in snow.

I had some complicated emotions. I was glad that I'd found my hat, now that I knew it had been lost, but simultaneously dismayed at its condition and pissed at myself for being so klutzy, and such a sloppy homemaker, and still not finished with my dissertation proposal...you know how it goes.

But at least I had my hat back. And after a series of soapy baths (for the hat, not me, though come to think of it that's not a bad idea) and yet another round of blocking, things are looking up. There's some damage--2 holes that I need to fix, which is tricky in a fabric that's pretty much made of holes and doesn't offer much to attach broken yarn to. But I'll figure it out. And I'm going to send out a draft of my proposal tomorrow, even if the footnotes do still say things like "footnote."

And now I'm going to go home and make some brownies, because what is Valentine's Day good for if you don't eat any chocolate?

Okay, I already had some chocolate. Shhh.

Need to share

2008-01-28T17:49:00.001-05:00

I've been struck once again by the proselytizing bug. I have to give you this granola recipe, and do anything in my power to get you to try it. Because it is delicious.

I first had this granola at Lisa and Alex's house, but the recipe was given to us by Katherine, and it says "Megan's Granola" at the top. So thanks to Megan for putting this recipe into circulation, whether or not she is in fact the inventor.

Aside--Megan is also the person who invented (or popularized?) the marvelous "Preggers Punch." Preggers Punch is just some strong fruit juice--cherry, pomegranate, cherry-pomegranate-blueberry--mixed with strong ginger beer, some ice, maybe a lime. And if you happen to be, as they say, expecting, you can drink it at parties where everyone else is drinking alcohol. And it's not just for those who are, you know, in a family way. I think Preggers Punch is Jeff's favorite drink in the world, and he's not in the least, ahem, enceinte. Believe me. I should know (leer, wink). Come to think of it, Preggers Punch would probably also be good spiked, if it turns out that you really do need alcohol to have fun.

But back to granola. Here's the recipe:

Megan's Granola

3 cups oats
3/4 shredded coconut*
1/4 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. maple syrup**
1/4 c. oil
1/2 tsp. salt

fruit and nuts, such as:
1 1/2 c. sliced almonds
1 c. craisins
1 c. golden raisins

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Mix oats, coconut,*** and brown sugar. In a separate bowl combine the oil, salt, and syrup.**** Combine both mixtures and pour onto sheet pan.

Cook for about an hour (we usually cook it less). Stir at 15 min. intervals, making sure the mixture is spread out on the pan to ensure even browning.

Transfer to bowl and add fruit and nuts.

Store in attractive glass jars.*****

*we don't use coconut because Jeff despises it. Me, I think coconut is the best thing ever. Coconut is sweetness and light. So put it in your granola, please, for me.

**really, I'm not a snob. But maple syrup means maple syrup, OK?

***if you're so lucky as to be able to include coconut

****this is the best part. The oil and syrup make a mysteriously thick and gooey substance when you mix them together. And it's kind of delicious if you're brave enough to admit to yourself that you think a gooey mixture of oil, salt, and syrup tastes good.

*****or, if you're like us, in old spaghetti sauce jars. But you should use the ones that don't still smell like spaghetti sauce, if possible.

I've always made a double batch of this granola--if you have to babysit it every 15 minutes you might as well make a lot at once, and it keeps well in the aforementioned attractive glass jars.

Now, the other thing I have to tell you about. This is really only of interest to knitters, just to warn you.

I recently finished a hat I'd been working on, desultorily, since...well, for a long time. It involved two parts: an outer lace layer, and a solid lining to make it warm. And both parts, when they were done, looked a wee bit small. At Christmas I nearly gave up on the hat and gave it to Eliza, who's 2. But I believe in the power of blocking--that is, getting the thing wet and pinning it out until it dries, so that it keeps the stretched-out shape. It works with wool things, though not the ones you accidentally put through the dryer, because those have probably felted, and that's different. Anyway, I got out my box of T-pins, which are made specially for this purpose, and blocked my hat by pinning it to an old box. This is what it looked like.

See how it says "Chicago Recycles" in the upper right corner there? That's kind of funny, because Chicago totally doesn't. At least, they don't recycle anything from my building. The best I can do is reuse my bag to back my blocking.

All seemed to be going well, until I took out the pins...

and they left rust stains!

This was devastating: I'd been working on this thing forever, and it was ruined just like that. So that's why I have to give you all this warning about deceptive T-pins.

The whole point of T-pins is that they're not supposed to rust when stuck in wet fabric overnight--which is, again, their job. I'm not sure what happened here. These may have been from a box of T-pins I bought at a fabric store, not a knitting store, so possibly there's a difference between "quilter's" and "knitter's" pins? But from now on I'm going to test all my T-pins by sticking them in wet stuff for a long time before I use them on anything I care about.

There's a more or less happy ending, though. I called up my friend The Internet and found out that lemon and salt can help with rust stains, and after much dabbing the spots were diminished enough to be not very noticeable. So that's my last piece of advice for today: rust stains-->lemon and salt.

More sage advice from this well-adorned head next time!

Return of the monkeys

2008-01-15T18:47:00.000-05:00

Thanks, Melissa, for probably not minding that I stole this from your blog.

Given how much we all love monkeys around here, how could I not tell you about this? It appears that a monkey (at Duke) made a robot (in Japan) walk. Just by thinking about it.

“It’s walking!” Dr. Nicolelis said. “That’s one small step for a robot and one giant leap for a primate.”

Melissa and I agree that we wish we were scientists.

Winter Wonderlands

2008-01-02T18:35:00.000-05:00

Aaaah, the end of the holidays. Really, it feels good to have work that I'm supposed to be doing again. Procrastination just isn't the same without it. And I'm ready to return to a diet of non-rich, non-exciting foods for awhile.

On the other hand, we still have a freezer full of cookies! This is because just before we left we hosted a cookie swap. Cookie swaps are wonderful. I would like to start a movement to replace all Yankee Swaps with Cookie Swaps. Imagine: everyone goes home with something she likes! I recognize that this might rob the holiday of some essential schadenfreude, but I think with enough cookies, we could muffle the pangs.

It's a good idea to arrange your cookie swap with a bunch of mildly competitive and/or perfectionistic people, such as those you might find in a graduate program. They bake very, very good cookies.

After we'd sampled as many as possible, we strolled over to the Point to take a break. High jinks ensued.

Also, lots of cute-couple-y-ness.

Where's the nice photo of me and Jeff, you ask? Well...it pains me to tell you this, but Jeff had eyes only for someone else:

His snow baby. It's true. Jeff loves snow more than me. Just ask him.

At least I had the satisfaction of seeing my rival's head (renamed "Cromwell") stuck up on a post, of sorts, when we went home.

We headed back to New England shortly thereafter, and snow followed us there. (Coincidence, Jeff? Hmmm?) So we got to spend a snow day with Jeff's niece Eliza, reading books,

horsing around,
And generally being super cute.

Jeff took Eliza on a sledding trip

and ended up very sweaty.

Almost as adorable are Eliza's parents, Katherine and Alex, who were our gracious hosts for several days.

Can we look at the reading-books photos again?

Awww.

Before long it was time to get Christmassy, so we started decorating. Jeff perched a member of my parents' Santa collection on the roof of the manger.

We're secularists.

And Christmas is about presents, after all. Laurel and Julia gave me a yoga mat, which they had shipped to Chicago, but Julia cleverly wrapped up a rolled piece of construction paper--purple, of course.

Mom and Dad, enablers of my knitting habit, got me a gift certificate to a local yarn producer. It came with little pieces of all the available yarn, and Mom and I got to spend some quality time figuring out the differences between Shetlands and Fishermans--and picking the nicest colors.

Clearly I could have used some help parting my hair.

Christmas Day always ends up looking like this at our house:

It used to be that Jenny would put on Star Wars and everyone would fall asleep on the couch, but now people play with their electronics and fall asleep on the couch. Jeff got one of the brand-spankin'-new Amazon Kindles, and he loooooves it. Watch out, snow.

It's about time I got back to my freezer full of cookies...I mean, to that kale in the fridge. Or both. So happy new year, everyone!

Whee!

BLANKET!

2007-12-19T13:08:00.000-05:00

This post has been a very long time in the making. I've been trying very hard to keep mum about it for so long that now, I'm having trouble finding anything to say. So look at this:

Try a mouseover. It's fun.

The above is a blanket. It was made by the four women you see under it (with some help from Jeff, too).

On Saturday, we gave it to Tom and Elizabeth, as a much-delayed wedding gift.

They were surprised.

Which is, itself, surprising, as we've had to keep the project a secret for a whole year. Tom and Eliz got engaged last November, and shortly thereafter someone--I think it was Abigail--came up with the idea that we (Abigail, Melissa, Andrea, and I) should knit them a blanket. So we got together to choose a pattern (we picked "psychedelic squares") and order yarn from KnitPicks. It was tricky to choose colors from a web page, and scary to contemplate how "psychedelic squares" might go very, very wrong--but the hardest thing was being sneaky about it. On the day that we'd chosen for the prep work, Elizabeth called each of us and invited us over for dinner. She thought it strange that we should all have previously unmentioned plans, since, truth be told, at least some of us aren't the type to have our Saturday nights all booked up. So she and Tom ate dinner alone, and drank a whole bottle of wine, and later Elizabeth asked us whether we thought that was problematic--is getting drunk with one's fiancee the same as getting drunk alone? (No, Elizabeth.)

Fortunately the project didn't involve too much us all hanging out and lying to Eliz and Tom about it. Once we had our yarn and everyone could execute a decent ssk, we all went home to knit our 20 squares (we didn't quite reach that goal, and reduced the blanket dimensions in the end). It took months. My squares were knit in Maine and Chicago and on airplanes in between, and while talking to Jeff on the phone; I took 2 little balls of yarn and a pair of needles wherever there was a high likelihood of idle hands (and a low one of Tom or Elizabeth's presence). I got attached to my squares. They saw me--all of us--through our orals. I was sort of sad when they were done. My hands were lonely.

The squares were done sometime in the summer, and we managed to coordinate schedules enough to meet up at Melissa's one very hot day, to figure out how to fit them all together. Blondie helped.

Then we took them home again to stitch them into bigger squares. Then we stitched the big squares into one huge square. Then we had to add a backing--and we didn't know what to do. None of us can sew.

Enter Jeff and his sewing machine! Jeff saved the day. With much ironing, marking, and basting, he made a perfect 60 x 60 square of blue flannel, and sewed red piping around the edges. Piping is magical.

From there, we were only 2 Sundays away from completion. We hand-stitched the blanket onto the backing (hand-stitching being so much less complicated than machine sewing, which is best left to the experts). We ate cookies, as by then it was winter again and proper cookie-season.

We also learned something. You know that little strawberry that's attached to your tomato-shaped pincushion? Nonsensical, when you think about it. It sharpens needles! Who knew? Fortunately, Jeff must have been paying attention in Home Ec. He knew all about the needle sharpener, and it sure came in handy along those 240" of circumference.

Finally, we stitched lots of little pieces of yarn through the blanket and backing to keep it all in place.

The back looked like this:

But then we tied the yarn in knots and cut the ends to uniform size (the length of a Hershey's Miniature turned out to be the perfect measure), so now it looks much more demure.

And then we were done!

Errrr...

Here's where I can't think of anything to say. This has been such a big, long project. I got used to it, you know? I'm not saying I want to jump in and do it all over again (Elizabeth was smart, being the first of our crowd to get married--I don't think anyone else is getting one of these!). But I'm not sure how to let it go...

Well, at least there's all this Christmas stuff to deal with. Last year, during my annual Christmas-Eve sob-fest, Jeff made me promise not to attempt handmade presents this year. Which I did. But I won't lie: when I was packing my suitcase yesterday, I packed some yarn and needles. You know, in case I get bored?

Meanwhile, off to the outlets!

In which what looks evil really isn't (except the dishes)

2007-12-03T17:05:00.001-05:00

The library has been taken over by undergraduates, who are supposed to be getting ready for their finals but are mostly just being annoying. Remember when the library was where you went to see all your friends and flirt with the people at the next table? Or maybe you weren't a big dork, like me. At any rate I am now well past all that and thoroughly annoyed at having my workspace hijacked by people who have no idea what working in the library means. So I look like this:

Yes, this annoyance is making me positively beige. It's also (as you can see) keeping me from doing any actual work. So I thought I'd do a blog post.

But what to post about? I can't go on about the annoying undergrads for ever, even if they are so very unwashed, and neglecting cell-phone etiquette completely, and wearing pajama pants for some reason . . . well, really I could go on for quite awhile, but nobody wants to read that. And going through my recent pictures I found that in most of them Jeff looks rather evil. Jeff, for those who don't know him, is not actually evil, nor is he evil-looking. I think he's quite nice looking, actually. But he does have blue eyes and is prone to the demon effect in flash photos. Also, it was just Thanksgiving, so there's some knife-wielding, and so on, making the non-evil pickings pretty slim. So I'll just have to go with the Evil Jeff thing. (Sorry, baby.)

We had a nice Thanksgiving at home--a small affair, with just 3 guests, so we got the fun of cooking without the difficulty of fitting a crowd in our little apartment. But we still did an excessive amount of planning, which involved index cards, and a 40-minute discussion of whether we would have butternut squash puree and some non-pureed form of sweet potatoes, or vice versa, and which recipes we would use for each. Jeff looks plausibly innocent in this phase of the operation.

But before long, out came the turkey--and out came the knife!

Did everyone see the NYT article on carving the turkey? There's even a video. It's about how if it weren't for Norman Rockwell no one would do such a silly thing as try to carve a turkey at the table (which I've never seen anyone do anyway), but would use a "butcher's method" to carve the bird efficiently behind the scenes. As shown above, but more comprehensively in the video.

I don't have much to show, photographically speaking, for Thanksgiving Day. Here's a little during:

And some after:

Jeff boiled down the carcass for a long, long time, and then made enough turkey soup to feed a crowd. Which was fortunate, as we had a brief series of dinner visitors in the next couple of days. Our friend Jake had an unexpected layover in Chicago, so he got to eat some of it. Then, the next day, we all to the top of the Sears Tower. Going to the top of tall buildings seems to be what we do when our friends have layovers in Chicago. When Katherine was here, we went to the top of the Hancock Building and I took a picture of the Sears Tower. So, from the Sears Tower:

It's sort of like taking a picture of someone taking a picture of you, in some complicated way.

Here, again, Jeff doesn't come off well in the photos.

I'm sure he intended neither to backhand Jake nor to plan a villainous takeover of the city, but it sure looks like it, doesn't it?

Maybe the upcoming holiday will yield better photos, and better things to talk about, and fewer dishes. One can dream.

The first Thanksgiving (this year)

2007-11-19T12:27:00.001-05:00

Last weekend I went to a conference in Worcester, MA, and since it was close to home and close to Thanksgiving, my family decided to have an ahead-of-time celebration. They're going to have another one for the actual day, but neither Laurel nor I will be able to make that one. And Dad doesn't mind cooking two turkeys in a row. This time, he tried brining the turkey, meaning soaking it in salt water before roasting it. Everyone else I know who's tried brining the turkey has been an instant convert, but my family wasn't quite sold. The turkey was good, they said, but it might have been good anyway. Not having roasted a control turkey there was no way to know.

My family tends to be somewhat scientific but not terribly precise in our cooking. Here, Dad checks the temperature with a candy thermometer...

...and I, coincidentally, recently found myself trying to use a meat thermometer to see if a mess of boiling apples had reached 220 degrees. The meat thermometer kept refusing to go above 208, but I suspect that meat thermometers aren't really meant to register that high. The apple butter, which is what I was aiming at, turned out fine. Delicious, actually. We're trying to save some for the real Thanksgiving but I'm not sure it'll make it, as it is so good with yogurt for breakfast.

To return to Thanksgiving I, the non-precise cooking methods didn't hurt anything and everything turned out fine--except, almost, Jenny's souffle. She mixed the sugar in with the wrong part of the eggs, I forget which, and you can't really do that in souffles. So she had to start over. That's the trouble with French cooking. Good old American cooking yielded mashed potatoes, squash, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and this version of Brussels sprouts.

I'm not generally a fan of Brussels sprouts but these were delicious, supporting the theory that gross vegetables are better if you find a way to cook them for a shorter time--in this case, by cutting them up small and sauteeing for four minutes. More support for this theory comes from a recipe in Chez Pannisse Vegetables that I made this fall, one time when I got to the farmer's market late and couldn't do better than Brussels sprouts if I wanted to go home with anything green. The recipe involved cutting out the cores of the sprouts, then separating all the little leaves. The pasta it made was wonderful, but I will probably never make it again--that's the kind of recipe that works best when you have an army of sous-chefs willing to work for cheap. The hashed-sprouts recipe is much easier, and I will make it again. In fact I even wanted to make it for Thanksgiving, but Jeff vetoed the idea--he thinks it's rude to put things like Brussels sprouts on the table in contexts in which guests feel obliged to take some of everything. So they will have to wait for some non-coercive occasion.

The souffle, by the way, came out perfectly.

At least, we think it did. It turned out that none of us knew what souffle was really like. But this one was very light and fluffy and did everything it was supposed to do along the lines of rising and falling. But even as a perfect specimen of souffle, it must be admitted that it was not as good as pie. Traditions exist for a reason.

And now, onwards to the next Thanksgiving!

OK, so the photo is sort of undermotivated. Mom had brought home this terrific wooden statue of Don Quixote, which my grandfather (an academic) had always kept on his desk. As an aspiring academic myself I understood the logic, and also really liked the statue, so I decided I needed a photo of it, and needed to put it on my blog for all the other aspiring academics who might be reading. Unfortunately it was really hard to get a decent photo, so that's all I can give you. (Furthermore, if you have "The Impossible Dream" stuck in your head for the rest of the day, I accept no responsibility.)

divine cleanliness

2007-11-01T14:05:00.001-05:00

Remember this?

That's what our living room looked like shortly (but not too shortly) after we moved. Finally, now, our living room looks like this:

Aaaaahhhh.

Not perfect (why do we have two lamps right next to each other? Because we didn't know where else to put them) but totally livable. We were lucky enough to have Jeff's sister Katherine visit us last weekend. It was wonderful to see her, and it also gave us the needed incentive to get the place in order. There was some fudging, of course; that's why God made closets, and cheesy mirrored doors, and temporary curtains.

Next to getting the apartment cleaned, the best thing about having a visitor is doing the things you never do in your neighborhood and city. We took the elevator up to the Signature Lounge on the 96th floor of the Hancock Building, which is way cheaper than paying to go up to the observatory, especially if you don't even get a drink, just look around and go back down (that makes it free). It really is spectacular, too. Someone told me that the best view is from the women's restroom, but I didn't see that one.

That's the best picture I took of the Sears Tower, which is still the world's tallest building under some rubric or other (tallest thing relative to extreme flatness of surroundings?), and definitely the tallest building in Chicago, though the Hancock is only around 100 feet shorter. The new Trump tower was going to be bigger, but got scaled down after 9/11 (Donald not being one to take a terrorist attack for the team). But the Sears Tower still doesn't get to be anyone's tallest building for much longer. Ground has been broken for the Chicago Spire, which will be a good deal taller, and is also Jeff's current favorite obsession. Even though you can only see his back in this picture, you can be sure he's imagining just where it will go in the skyline:

Jeff could tell you not only where The Spire will be, but how tall, and what smack Donald Trump talked about it because it'll be bigger than his building, and so on. But I can't, because I'm not that good a listener, and not interested enough to check Wikipedia (but you can--I even gave you the link!).

In the previous picture Jeff and Katherine are at Promontory Point, a park just a couple of blocks from our apartment, where we hardly ever go for walks. But having a visitor and it being a lovely October day, we did walk there, and continued to walk south, around the Museum of Science and Industry:

Through the Oriental Gardens

And all the way to the Golden Lady, also known as the Statue of the Republic.

All of these are relics of the 1893 World's Fair, which we learned all about in The Devil in the White City. If you haven't read it, the book follows two plots: the construction of the World's Fair grounds, and the evil shenanigans of a serial killer. And, as Jeff pointed out the other day, the construction plot is way more interesting. By the way, did I give someone my copy of The Devil in the White City? Jeff wants to reread it now that he lives right near all this stuff. So if you're done with it, maybe we can borrow it back?

Katherine left on Sunday, and we luckily had a dinner party to go to (images here and cake recipe here), but then it was the post-visit letdown. Our living room is already strewn with laundry (where else would we put it?), and I've been trying to get back to work on my dissertation proposal (I ran into Tom and Dave yesterday, who suggested abbreviating to something like "disprop" which sounds vaguely Soviet and also reminds one of "dismal," which my proposal is, at present). All to say, visitors are most welcome! And we have an Aerobed!

Apple Picking

2007-10-12T19:51:00.001-04:00

Last weekend we participated in the second-annual CI apple-picking event. Last year, for the first-annual, we went to this charming orchard in Wisconsin:

This is a different kind of apple orchard than I was used to. (This is where the link should go for an apple orchard I grew up going to, but, see, those apple orchards don't have websites. I did find this mention of Apple Annie's.) It offered not only cheese curds, but cheese shaped like beer

And not only a petting zoo, but

Yeesh. We had a great time, though. Tom and Elizabeth even used this photo on their wedding website:

(If Abigail and Jeff ever have a wedding website, I think they should use this one:)

On the other hand, the traffic going and coming was awful, and likely to be worse this year because of construction, so we abandoned Apple Holler for a place farther off the beaten path, in Indiana (no offense to Hoosiers: I don't mean to say that Indiana's any farther off the beaten path than Wisconsin, just contrast these particular orchards, OK?). Except for it being 90 degrees, it was idyllic: lots of apples, no cheese curds in sight. There were these golden-delicious trees that were the most beautiful color.

And the apples were scrumptious, too. Even Abigail, who doesn't like any Deliciouses, was so delighted with them that she made a face like this:

They also made wicked good throwin' apples.

But it was 90 degrees, and we had to take breaks to rest in the shade. Rob started the trend.

And before long Tom and Elizabeth were on the wagon.

It was all downhill from there. Andrea got so hot, she said "screw you all, I'm going to Steak 'n Shake."

Actually, she didn't say that. What really happened was that we all got so hot that we said collectively, "screw this. We're going to Steak 'n Shake."

And we did.

(There are more photos on flickr: Andrea's and mine.)

Necessary to be had in all families

2007-10-02T20:09:00.000-04:00

It's actually October, which means it's definitely fall, which means people are getting sick left and right. Jeff came down with a bad cold last week, and in addition to giving us an excuse to spend Saturday on the couch watching PBS cooking shows, it reminded me that I have to share this with you.

It's called switchel. It looks ominous, and tastes that way too, but it will make you not sick anymore. I guess everyone has his or her own anti-cold potion--Jeff swears by matzo ball soup--but really, you should try this. (Is Jeff better yet? No. Too many matzo balls, too little switchel, if you ask me.)

Switchel is apparently an olden-days drink, not a cold medicine, just something people liked to drink. My family discovered it at one of those olden-days festivals they have at farms sometimes, where they make kids roll hoops around and card wool, I guess to make them appreciate how good we have it in the present. So they had this drink, and Mom liked it (even though it's kind of gross), and then we found a recipe for it in The Loaf and Ladle Cookbook. I don't remember how its cold-fighting properties were discovered, but they were, and they exist.

What you do is you take a lot of apple cider, substantially smaller amounts of cider vinegar and molasses, and a bunch of ground ginger, mix them together, and drink as much as you can stomach until your cold goes away. I don't know specific amounts--I would say "to taste" except that it tastes pretty bad, so it's more like "to tolerance." In the brew pictured above I filled up an old liter-sized soda bottle about three-quarters of the way with cider, and divided the remaining quarter among the other ingredients and some empty space so I could shake it up. If that clarifies anything. But try it. Really.

Now that I've done my public service, I will tell you what else has been going on. Mostly, it comes down to a lot of mess, like this:

And lists, like this:

And ingenious space-saving solutions, like these:

(Many thanks to Ikea and The Container Store, without which none of this would have been possible. Except the mess, and the lists.)

It's getting close to a month since we moved, so I guess we can't say we're moving anymore. We're not quite what you'd call settled, but we've come a long way--we did clean up that mess in the living room, at least enough to sit on the couch:

Actually, we took that photo our first night here, to document our first dinner in our new home. But the mess got put back on the couch afterwards, so the point stands.

My plants are pluckily coming back to life, after being brutally burned because I left them in the hot sun in the car for two days:

Inspiring, isn't it? And us, we're chugging along, hanging things up, cleaning out the wall-anchors section of the hardware store, drilling a lot of holes. As it turns out Jeff's legal education has come in unexpectedly handy:

(The secret usefulness of my own education continues to await the right moment to unveil itself.)

And then, there's the rest of life, which we're trying to get on with. Which, speaking of, I should get on with. 'Til next time.

The photo issue

2007-09-04T12:12:00.000-04:00

I know, it's been a long time since I've posted--long enough that I despair of producing a coherent narrative. Instead I present a camera-fart. Unfortunately Photoshop has gotten smart enough to know that my version is pirated, so just about all the photos need some cropping and balancing and whatnot, but nevertheless are collectively worth millions of words.

The truth is that a lot of the past few weeks has been spent in dreary moving-related situations:

I'd like you to know that the above office is now not only as-if-freshly-painted, but also thoroughly empty, thanks in (small) part to my intrepid driving of a rental truck.

My grouchy look is representative of my feelings about driving a truck, but unrepresentative of the actual location of said truck at the time:

Being scared of the highway I stayed on Route 1, that gauntlet of temptation. And being about to leave New England I had to to get a last taste of Grape-Nut ice cream...and of course Jeff needed a black-and-white shake (or, if I'm being regional, frappe). This attitude may account for the 12 hours it took to get Jeff's office packed up, but might also be responsible for us not breaking up in the process.

The rest of these photos make my life look really, really fun. Which it has been, in between all the dreary stuff. For one thing I've gotten to see several dear but remote friends lately, like Kendra and Jake:

These fun-loving and photogenic people live in England now, but were in town for Kendra's brother Patrick's wedding, of which I have no photos. You'll have to take my word for it that it was lovely.

Speaking of weddings, Jeff and I headed down to NYC over the weekend to see Tom and Elizabeth safely hitched. The rest of the time was mostly given over to eating terrific food and drinking copiously, starting with the bachelorette party at Pylos:

And Odessa:

(If you look closely here, you can see that Elizabeth's eyes already gleaming pink with anticipation.)

As a public service announcement, I must tell you about these:

Do you know what you are looking at? It is a picture of the best pancakes in the world. If you didn't know that pancakes could actually be mind-blowing (and who did?), and if you are in the environs of New York City, please go to Le Baricou, at Grand and Union in Williamsburg. We had a world-historical breakfast there with Nora and Noam.

You'd think bringing us into the proximity of the pancakes to end all pancakes would be a good morning's work, but they also revealed to us the truth about modernity's place in history. At breakfast!

And then the highlight of the weekend, the wedding at the Botanical Gardens on Sunday. Behind the scenes there was wrestling with ribbons

and face-painting

But in spite of the inexpert help, just look...

Elizabeth was, everyone agreed, a vision.

From the seats Jeff managed to get pictures of the lovely Melissa

and my demure self

and, finally, the new husband-and-wife!

Then came the party, with more spectacular food and copious drink, and a dearth of pictures because I don't like my flash. But here's Dave and Michael

and us

and Jeff and Abigail, whom I wish I had a better picture of because they were so very good-looking.

Then it was all over, and Jeff and I drove home. We managed to clear enough room in our tummies to make the customary stop in Vernon, Connecticut

and then I fell asleep and remember no more.

The next day was Labor Day, and while Jeff ran more dreary errands I got to go to Wells Beach, where my brother-in-law's parents have a house. It was, it turns out, Jenny and Reggie's first anniversary. A year ago we were all running around trying to keep Hurricane Ernesto off our dresses. This year, we looked at honeymoon photos

and generally sat around, enjoying the much-improved weather.

I hadn't seen Laurel since the wedding, because she's been working so hard on her tan in the BVI all year. She managed to adjust to New England conditions tolerably well, considering.

And with that we are up-to-date. Today we're doing some packing and moving of furniture and running of errands; tomorrow we pack up the rental truck, and then we'll be on the road for sweet home Chicago. So the next images will be rest stops, and fields of alfalfa, and moving boxes, but I'll try to spare you those.

Mystery geese

2007-08-04T18:57:00.001-04:00

I've been staying at Annie and Grant's place up in Evanston for the last few days, while they're in India. Today the temperature (in Evanston--I don't know about India) turned tolerable, so I decided to stop not getting anything done at home and go for a walk. Evanston, wouldn't you know, has a town rose garden. I did not grow up in the kind of town with a town rose garden, and maybe that's why I was mystified by some of the things I found there. More on that later. First I just took some unmysterious photos of roses, until my camera battery died.

(That last one I call "Georgia O'Keefe with Ant.")

The roses were beautiful, and even with my unfancy digital camera the pictures were almost as beautiful, but what can you do with pictures of roses? If you put them on your wall you'll feel like you're waiting for the doctor all the time. Not the home-effect I'm looking for. Though come to think of it, any home-effect would do at present, so maybe the roses can find a place after all.

Well, the park also featured this much less conventionally beautiful fountain.

It's called "Centennial Fountain," having been dedicated on July 4, 1876 to the first hundred years of American independence. But instead of horses, flags, Indians...

It's a bunch of geese.

Not happy geese, either; geese who seem to be undergoing a Dantean variety of water torture.

Maybe they represent Tory geese?

Think that's the King George III goose? Or maybe just the goose prison guard?

If you're out there, Evanston Historical Society, we need your help.

Women I Love

2007-07-31T22:39:00.001-04:00

How many of you get the Esquire reference in that title? That is, how many of you have boyfriends who are, er, confident enough to read Esquire? So in case you don't know, Esquire has this thing they do where they showcase the most interesting and intelligent aspects of celebrity women, under the title "Women We Love." Wait--sorry, I mistyped. In place of "most interesting and intelligent aspects" in the last sentence, please emend "boobs."

Now, my sources tell me that the internet is also a boob-loving place, but being a lot bigger than an Esquire it has room for interesting and intelligent too. In my late slackerdom I've had time to find some splendid blogs, all of which happen to be by women, all of whom I happen to be currently in love with. These blogs are of the crafty/kitcheny sort. Oh, dear, does that make me a chauvinist pig? Should I be trying harder to like The Huffington Post? Should I love The Huffington Post?

Well, as a wise woman once said to me, you can't help who you love. So here are my blog infatuations of the moment:

http://orangette.blogspot.com/
http://wednesdaychef.typepad.com/
http://www.thepioneerwomancooks.com/ (and http://www.thepioneerwoman.com/)
http://www.figandplum.com/
http://www.eunnyjang.com/knit/ (seems kind of defunct at the moment)
http://www.masondixonknitting.com/

I wish there were more, and I'm sure there are other bloggers in the sea, but I'm a pretty bad internet surfer. I stick to what I know, and discover new things very slowly (most of those above came from friends' recommendations, actually). So suggestions are welcome--I have plenty of internet love to spare yet!

Ennui and Awesomeness

2007-07-28T13:40:00.001-04:00

Once, not long after we'd started dating, Jeff explained to me the guiding principle of his life. That does seem to be one of those things you do when you've just started dating and are having the kind of deep conversations that disappear by about week 3. During our deep-conversation period, I learned that Jeff's guiding principle is to seek out the awesome (to get the real effect, you have to say it like an exuberant teenage boy--or maybe an exuberant thirty-ish boy. Try it: awesome!). Discovering and celebrating awesomeness, said Jeff, was the best way he could think of to spend one's life. There was probably some facetiousness here, but at the time I didn't ask many questions. It was, as I said, early in our relationship, and I was rather intimidated. Secretly, I knew that I spend a lot more time in the worlds of rather-niceness and kinda-coolness than awesomeness. I started to suspect that I couldn't keep up with this guy's standards.

Sometimes I still suspect that, but must somehow have managed to keep Jeff in the dark, seeing as we're still together--look!

I couldn't resist displaying that photo. So it's hokey, but...I'm writing a post on awesomeness! What's the use in trying to be cool? This picture is particularly awesome because it was one of those hold-the-camera-at-arm's-length-and-hope-for-the-best jobs that never come out. Autofocus, by the way, is awesome.

I was thinking about the awesomeness issue recently because I've been missing it. Everything's fine--life is pretty low-pressure right now, and I have plenty of time for the bit of work I'm doing , which is a nice change. I've been staying with friends in Chicago, and am feeling very thankful to have such friends, who are bending over backwards to help me out during this transition (thanks, guys, really). I have lots to appreciate. Nevertheless, I'm having a hard time getting excited about much. I keep trying to read things, or listen to things, or do projects, but I just find myself bored. Maybe it's the humidity, maybe it's the everlasting unsettledness, but awesomeness feels very remote.

One side effect of everything being so boring is that there's nothing worth writing a blog post about. My standard (obviously) isn't so high as real awesomeness, but I can't get interested enough in anything to want to share it. I don't think this is a good state to be in. So I've been pushing myself to find awesomeness to share. Fortunately, since I'm pretty good at blowing off intrinsic motivation, I had some pressure from another source: I was required to find some awesome recipes, to contribute to a recipe box for Elizabeth's shower. (Here she is opening it.)

(By the way, more visual awesomeness is on display at Andrea's photo blog.)

Having had to rustle up my favorite recipes, and in the process being reminded of their awesomeness, it occurs to me that they should be shared more widely. Some of my recipe cards were pretty obvious--the Best Recipe pancakes really are the best pancakes, and their cookie-crust cobbler is the best cobbler of any kind. But by some stroke of luck Tom and Elizabeth don't have the Best Recipe Cookbook, nor Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, so finding recipes to give them was a breeze. Here are two others that I think everyone should have: the best tomato sauce for pasta (Marcella Hazan's--incredibly easy and simple) and the best pizza crust (Chez Panisse's--this one takes forever, which is something I seldom tolerate in recipes, but it is so good).

Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter

2 cups canned Italian plum tomatoes, cut up with their juice (we use Pomi usually)
5 tablespoons butter
1 medium onion, peeled and cut in half
Salt

Put canned tomatoes in saucepan, add butter, onion and salt and cook uncovered at a slow and steady simmer for 45 minutes or until fat floats from tomato. Stir from time to time, mashing any large piece of tomato in pan with a wooden spoon. Taste and correct for salt. Discard onion and serve sauce with pasta. This recipe makes six servings.

Pizza Crust

2 t. dry yeast
3/4 c. lukewarm water
2/3 c. bread flour

4 c. unbleached white flour
1/4 c. rye flour
1 t. salt

1/3 c. olive oil

Make a sponge by dissolving yeast in 3/4 c. water, stirring in 2/3 c. flour, and allowing to sit until quite bubbly (about 30 min.).

Mix flours and salt in another bowl. Stir 1 c. cold water and 1 c. dry ingredients into sponge. Mix thoroughly and let sit another 30 min.

Add remaining ingredients and knead until dough is soft and elastic (5 min.). Add more flour if necessary, but dough should remain soft and slightly sticky.

Put dough in a large bowl, cover, and let rise in a warm place until doubled (2 hrs., or let rise overnight in the fridge).

Punch dough down and divide into portions of the size you want (7 oz. for a regular-sized thin-crust pizza). Form each into a smooth sphere and wrap in plastic. Allow to rest at room temperature for 1 hr. before shaping and baking. Balls of dough can also be frozen, then thawed overnight when you want to use them.

Notes:
1. I suspect the second sponge step could be skipped without much damage. This recipe really does require an exorbitant amount of rising time, and there's no reason we should stand for it.
2. I've used just all-purpose flour and whole wheat flour in place of the 3 kinds in the recipe, because that's what I had, and it worked fine.
3. This is amazingly good if you make it really thin and bake it at a high temperature--say, 450 for 15 minutes.
4. Did you know that fresh mozzarella now comes in "pearl" form? I suspect that real foodies have gripes about this--not being authentic or something. But not being a mozzarella connoisseur, I think it's marvelous that it comes in little bits, so you don't have to cover the pizza with enormous clumps of cheese, or deal with chopping it up, or settle for the really inauthentic kind in the bag. Mozzarella pearls + pre-grated parmesan=excellent shortcut pizza topping.

Parodic genius

2007-07-23T11:29:00.000-04:00

I must direct you to Michael's amazing composition, called "Epithalamion." I don't know how to pronounce "epithalamion," but I do know that it means a poem for a wedding. This one is for Tom and Elizabeth, whose wedding approaches apace. And it's hilarious.

The blog way-back machine

2007-07-17T17:51:00.000-04:00

Now for more of what happens when knitting and blogging get together.

Remember my very first blog post? Here it is:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here is my project du jour: I'm trying to knit a sock with fish on it. It didn't seem like it would be that hard; even my very limited representational skills can handle fish (OK, this fish is kind of scary and deformed, but it's a first attempt). However, it turns out that it's well-nigh impossible to knit shapes like this when you're knitting something like a sock, which goes around and around instead of back and forth. Which is why the inside looks like this:

Nobody wants a sock like that. Your toes would get caught on all the threads--especially little two-year-old toes. And the sock (along with its brother, ideally) is indeed a gift for a two-year-old, who as such is unlikely to look past his tangled toes and just appreciate all my time and care.

I was going to post a photo of the almost-two-year-old in question, but I don't really know the rules of blogging yet and I thought maybe one shouldn't post pictures of other people's children without asking the parents. And I can't ask without ruining the sock surprise (hopefully Alex and Lisa will manage to miss the media sensation that will surely result from the publication of my blog...if I don't tell them about it, at least). Perhaps I should give you a blank space so you can imagine a cute blue-eyed almost-two-year-old.

Next episode: if Lawrence Sterne had a blog...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Aha, now, you didn't see that, did you? It was actually my first blog post, but it only existed on the internets for a couple of seconds. That's because just after I published it I sent out an email to announce the debut of my blog, and somehow included the people I was supposed to be keeping a secret from. (Keeping secrets is not my forte, it may behoove you to know.) I realized this, and immediately deleted the post. I'd already written post #2 (I published the first two at the same time) so I had to come up with another reference to the Widow Wadman on the spot. (The result was this post.)

Well, I did give up on the fish and made stripes instead. They ended up like this:

As it turns out, the boy already has these sandals:

Fish--in the very same colors! So my fishy socks would have been over-thematic anyway. Personally I don't think children should have their own themes until they're at least two-and-a-half (and that means you, princesses).

Having recovered from the fish episode, I'm hanging about in Chicago and trying to learn what "embodied cognition" means. Any ideas?

Knitting Revelation!

2007-07-16T19:11:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago I wasn't feeling so good about my knitting. I couldn't figure out why everyone else's knitting seems so much more even than mine. I've been knitting awhile, and I've certainly done enough of it in the past year to keep in practice, so you'd think I could keep an even tension. And I could, when going around in a circle, but when I started going back and forth there were problems. You can see this in a sweater I made for Dana and Chris's forthcoming baby:

See how the bottom couple of inches have a different texture? This sweater is made mostly in the round, but there are slits at the bottom so it's knit back-and-forth, and that's when I have problems.

So there I was, feeling bad about myself, when I was saved by the mysterious appearance of a Stitch-n-Bitch book at my grandmother's house. I don't know how it got there, unless I have a guardian knitting angel after all. I decided to look at the very basic instructions to find out if I was knitting all wrong. And as it turned out, I was! Actually, the knitting was fine; the purling was the problem.

I learned to knit back in high school, but only the knit stitch--which is the regular right-side one. When you're knitting back and forth, you have to do one row of the right-side stitch, then a row of an opposite stitch for the wrong side. That's purling. I discovered this all on my own, around 10 years ago, when I bought some nice yarn and decided to knit a scarf for my dad. It wasn't coming out right, and I figured out the right-side/wrong-side thing. I had a lot of time on my hands but not many resources, so I went ahead and tried to figure out how to do a backwards stitch. Basically I took all the parts of the knit stitch and reversed them--put the needle the opposite way, wrapped the yarn the opposite way, and so on. Weirdly, it worked, and I've been doing it that way every since.

Turns out, though, that you're not supposed to wrap the yarn the opposite way. It goes the same way. If you go the opposite way it makes the stitch all twisty, and the texture of the fabric gets uneven.

So now I know! If only I could go back and redo everything I've purled in the last decade. But the future is bright.

I have another knitting-related mishap to tell you about. In this case, it's more of a blogging mishap, actually. But you'll have to wait for next time.

Update

2007-07-06T17:28:00.000-04:00

Remember back when I didn't have my camera and had to post things I found online? Well, now I have my camera, and it has some damn cute pictures on it from the 4th of July, but I can't find the cord to connect it to my computer. So it's just like the old days, in effect. For consistency, here is another photo of me at my computer:

I just can't seem to avoid the deer-in-the-headlights look with this thing.

Anyway, I thought I'd make sure everyone was on board with the reason I can't find my camera cord, since I can't remember whom I've explained things to and who is still in the dark.

A long time ago, i.e. May, I thought that Jeff and I would be spending the summer in an old farmhouse in Kennebunkport, ME. This was a less charming situation than you might expect, unless you find bugs and rodents charming. However, it was to be our home. We did a lot of work to move into it (thanks in part to aforementioned critters), but before we got finished we found we'd have to leave again. This was the result of a situation involving an oral agreement, a month-to-month lease, and a divorce--all of which, I would now say, are best avoided.

Well, we started packing up again. This, too, took a long time, even with the help of Mom and Dad's wonderful van--can I plug the Toyota Sienna without a total loss of dignity? I guess admitting that you're jealous of your parents' minivan is kind of like discovering that you're always stopping the radio scanner on the easy-listening station. Alas, for me, both are true. But thanks to the minivan we finally got most things (minus the critters, as far as possible) into storage, and everything else into our own woefully compact cars. And the reason I can't find my camera cord is that it's in one of those places, but seems not to be in my car, which is the only searchable one at the moment.

So for now, it's the gypsy life for me and Jeff. We're going to be moving to Chicago sometime this summer--I'll be going in the next week or so, and Jeff will follow sometime later this summer. And then we will never, ever move again.

For awhile anyway.

I'm a chimp!

2007-06-25T01:17:00.000-04:00

Or am I? You decide...

And Jeff's a LION. (But you can change that too.)

The Boat

2007-06-21T18:25:00.000-04:00

Three years ago, my parents bought a boat. It's a big (33') old (1940s) wooden (mahogany) sailboat, originally named Old Rarity. Old Rarity has some history--she was the first boat to be skippered by a woman in the Mackinac Island Race. However, nobody liked the name (which refers to some kind of scotch, I believe), so we resolved to risk bad luck and change it. The family decided on Noctiluca, which is the microscopic creature responsible for bioluminescence in the ocean. More about noctiluca and Noctiluca are here: http://www.gaudet.info/nameboat.html.

Noctiluca is a beautiful boat--and a jealous mistress. Mom and Dad spent pretty much every weekend through the winter working on the boat, and getting her in the water is a complicated and anxiety-ridden project. Here's an abridged play-by-play.

A few days ago the boat looked like this:

Taking the shed down is a process in itself, but with the help of cousins Michael and Susan it got stowed under the porch until next winter. Here's Dad, standing triumphantly on the boat by the house in Five Islands.

It looks good, doesn't it? But at this point the bilge still had to be drained of antifreeze, the engine checked, missing pins located, paint touched up, and so on. And then there's the pesky trouble of getting it into the water. We launched Tuesday afternoon, and all went smoothly...

Except for the sea monster we found attacking our boat when we got to the mooring.

Never fear--it was no match for me and Dad, and before long Noctiluca was safe on the mooring.

That was the easy part: we still had to get the mast set up. We put it on a trailer and did some fancy stuff with rope and plywood.

Then we waited for low tide, when the distance between the top of the wharf and the top of the water would be greatest, before rolling the trailer down the hill to the wharf.

We needed to use the fishermen's winch at the wharf to lift the mast over the boat, but on the night of the launch a fishing boat was waiting there for a tuna buyer to show up, and the buyer was late. (Did you know that tuna sometimes sells for $55 a pound--wholesale? There are stories of fish selling for $28,000, even $40,000. But no one's catching fish like that these days, we were told--tuna's overfished like everything else.)

The tuna boat moved aside for us, but we missed the low tide. So back up the hill went the mast, and back down we came the next night--and this time had along some friends who knew what they were doing. They lowered it down to the boat, where Jeff and I were, helpfully standing around.

Then everyone got too busy to take pictures. But eventually, a happy ending:

Shouldn't be too long now before we can put up some sails and get out on the water!

More monkeys

2007-06-11T19:12:00.000-04:00

Everyone has something to say about monkeys, as it turns out. Tom reminded me of this passage from William Hogarth:

"A monkey too whose figure, as well as most of his actions, so oddly resembles the human, is also very comical; and he becomes more so when a coat is put on him, as he then becomes a greater burlesque on the man. There is something extremely odd and comical in the rough shock dog. The ideas here connected are the inelegant and inanimate figure of a thrum mop, or muff, and that of a sensible, friendly animal; which is as much a burlesque of the dog, as the monkey when his coat is on, is of the man."

Which was much catchier in Tom's paraphrase, which went something like: "A monkey is fundamentally comical, but even more so when he has a coat on."

Tom also pointed me to this very fun thing to do on the internet:

adopt your own virtual pet!

See what you can make the monkey do!

But back to clothed monkeys: a person who preferred that her name be withheld (to avoid risk to her scientific credentials) thought the tail rule to distinguish monkeys (tails) from apes (no tails) was generally a good one. However, this rule only works if you can remember whether the animal in question has a tail or not. Neither of us could, for example, get a good mental picture of a chimpanzee's behind and therefore couldn't say what kind of primate it was. Fortunately, we remembered that chimpanzees are often made to wear pants, and this wouldn't be feasible were they monkeys, with tails. Ergo, chimpanzees are not monkeys because they can wear pants.

Not that I support the wearing of human clothing by nonhumans, for the record. It's just a useful mnemonic...should you ever find it useful to remember whether or not a chimp is a monkey.

I will leave you with some images from Hogarth, because they're so delightful. First, a monkey (in a coat, and no pants, naturally).

And here's a morality tale, which happens to feature a dog (maybe rough-shock? I'm not sure).

This one is called "Before":

And this is "After."

I'll leave you to ponder that until next time.

You say sauce, I say sawce

2007-06-09T17:56:00.000-04:00

I've recently been informed that "saucebox" is listed in Webster's 11th, so I could play English teacher and tell you to figure it out for yourself if you want to know what it means. But I have been an English teacher and so I know that you probably won't. Furthermore, I've also been informed that the word can seem a little PG-13 when out of context, such as being the title of a blog or being written in bleach on a wifebeater. So here is a little explanation.

"Saucebox" was a popular insult in the 18th century (and I believe in the 17th and some of the 19th too). I first encountered it in novels like Clarissa and Pamela, in which it gets hurled (along with other zingers, like "boldface") at the ever-resisting heroines. But saucebox is not just for women, oh no. Here is an example:

If you can't find the "saucebox," give "faucebox" a try. This is a page from a 1790 edition of Noah Webster's American Spelling Book. And if you can't read it, it's a charming story about a little boy who climbs a tree to steal (or fteal, if you prefer) apples. The nice old man who owns the tree tries to get the young rascal down by throwing grass at him, but this is clearly ludicrous and the boy, to his credit, only laughs. The story ends happily when the man moves on to chucking stones and the boy learns his lesson.

This fable might be usefully modified for today's primers, substituting some kind of electronics store for the apple tree, etc. But speaking of spelling books, you may have noted that while I've been telling you all about sauceboxes, my blog address is "sawcebox." This is because "saucebox" was already taken. Can you believe it? But fortunately the 18th century was a time of many spellings. The two versions, along with sauce-box and sawce-box, get used more or less interchangeably, even within a single text. And so...200 years of spelling standardization down the drain. Sorry, Mr. Webster.

Monkey House

2007-06-07T17:01:00.001-04:00

Whew, that last post was long. And one person said to me, "I didn't realize it was going to be so...erudite." It's hard to talk about the 18th century without being both long-winded and "erudite," it seems. So today, I give you this:

This is the coolest monkey. I think it's a monkey...I know I've gotten in trouble before for calling things monkeys that are actually primates or apes or something. But at the Lincoln Park Zoo this guy is in the Primate House, not the [Regenstein] Ape House. Maybe it's that monkeys have tails and apes don't? And they're all primates? Mom, or Jen, or Carrie (who's looking at chimpanzees [not monkeys?] in Tanzania right now!), or any of you bio-types please chime in if you feel the need to set the record straight.

Is this what you mean by punctilio, Andrea? Really I'm content to go around calling any furry human-looking thing a monkey, which is the most fun word to say of the bunch, but I don't want to be irritating to people who know better.

But whatever this thing is, it's called a Francois' Langur, and if you can get to the zoo you should go see them. This picture doesn't do justice--partly because it's blurry (no flashes in the zoo) and partly because they're just better in real life. They all sit around and look like a greaser motorcycle gang, with their mohawks and sideburns. And the langur-lings apparently look just the same except that they're bright orange! If I were a monkey these guys would be way too hip to talk to me.

(wait, I'm not a monkey, am I?)

More Things Kate Thinks Are Cool next time.

Sterne-opaedia

2007-06-05T23:30:00.000-04:00

One of the things I want to do in this blog is write about the things I study (which are, generally, literature, the 18th century, and early America). In part this is because I think these things are cool. But also I have this problem: when someone asks me what I've been working on, I usually have only about five seconds to answer before the glassy stare sets in. And I really can't answer the question in five seconds. So the blog might be a good way for me to share some of the things I think about all day, since you can read right up to your own boredom tolerance, and not beyond.

So Lawrence Sterne. Novelist, preacher, sentimentalist. The reference in the previous post is to his book The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, which includes the blank page pictured above. Tristram finds it impossible to describe the beauty of the Widow Wadman, so he leaves it to the reader to fill in the image himself ("as like your mistress as you can---- as unlike your wife as your conscience will let you"). There is, by the way, a recent movie of TS in which the Widow Wadman is represented not by a blank page but by Gillian Anderson. If you're looking for something to put on your Netflix queue, I recommend this movie. It's really not a stuffy BBC adaptation kind of thing. The website's here: http://tristramshandymovie.com/

In addition to the Widow Wadman's white page TS also features a black page to signal someone's death, and a marbled page, though I can't remember why. There are sections of dialogue represented only with dashes, and asterisks to signify fake lacunae, as if part of the text were lost, though it obviously wasn't. Even a chapter with no words. You think that's postmodern? I haven't even gotten to the nonlinear narrative. However this is 1759 we're talking about, so it's totally pre-pomo, and therefore relatively tolerable.

I saw the movie Knocked Up the other day. It was great fun. It also reminded me of Tristram Shandy. Well, honestly, not until just now. But I think TS is a guy-book the same way KU is a guy-movie (albeit more textually experimental, and with a lot more John Locke). There are at least two commonalities. First, penis jokes aplenty; second, men who don't quite manage to grow up right. In both the book and the movie we're dealing pretty good guys, who mean well, but act like dubbers. In neither case would any of these men be the father of your child, in an ideal world. I wonder why this is such a continually compelling theme for guy movies. Possibly there is an answer that isn't depressingly cynical?

In TS the most prominent characters are Tristram's dad, Walter, and his uncle, Toby. Uncle Toby literally won't hurt a fly, but spends his days building trenches, reenacting battles, and making model weapons. He's too distracted by all of this to manage to get it on with the aforementioned Widow Wadman. Walter is more of a grown-up: he at least has a wife and family, and his obsession is Lockean theory rather than war games. Walter is so worried about how Tristram's childhood, birth, and even conception will affect his son's future character that he screws everything up completely. A good example is the Tristra-paedia, a book that is to contain a perfect education for Tristram. The irony is that Walter spends all of his time on the book rather than paying attention to Tristram, right up until what might be the only accidental circumcision in literature (note penis joke).

Sterne calls Walter and Toby's fixations "hobbyhorses;" they are therefore acting "hobby-horsical" when they are busy fixating on them. In my opinion "hobby-horsical" is right up there with "saucebox" on the list of words that should be revived.

So, not to be too hobby-horsical about Tristram Shandy (which isn't even one of my hobbyhorses, really), I'll sign off. I'm off today to my very first meeting about my dissertation proposal--rather, about beginning to come up with ideas for my dissertation proposal. Here goes the rest of my life... (or at least the next few years).

Blogging cameraless

2007-06-05T20:48:00.000-04:00

This whole blog thing seemed like a good idea because I'd be able to show you what it looks like here (wherever "here" may be). But I forgot to bring my camera with me to Chicago, which is where "here" is now. I'm not sure what exactly would be worth taking pictures of--the train going by outside my window? My mostly-empty apartment? But anyway, I can't take them. Perhaps I will leave you a blank space in which to draw your own vision of Chicago.

Next episode: if Lawrence Sterne had a blog...

My new computer (very exciting!) does have a camera. It pretty much just works to take pictures of me sitting at my computer. Here's one:

Yup, that's what I look like sitting at my computer.

If I were a real artist I could probably get pretty far with photos of me at my computer. Not being one, I'm overcome with boredom already, as, I imagine, are you (unless you're a real art-appreciator).

So, I'll just end now so we can all go to sleep.