Catalogs

After buying a few things on-line, I started to get catalogs. No biggie, they were entertaining to flip through and then I dumped them right in the recycling. It's never a problem if they're from stores you like. But once I bought a gift at Pottery Barn baby and then I started getting kid catalogs sent to me (and I have no kids). Add in a few magazine subscriptions, and then you start getting catalogs from stores you didn't know existed.

Once I got my eleventh JCrew catalog for the season (yes, they have early- mid- late spring catalogs all filled with the same stuff in case you didn't see it the first time), I stumbled upon CatalogChoice.org in the newspaper as a way to eliminate catalog waste.

Basically, you sign up and report the catalogs you're getting that you don't want and they make a request to the company. And best of all, it's free.

So if you want to stop getting those annoying unsolicited catalogs, then this is one way to do it.

Earth Hour: Fun with candles

Last night between 8-9 p.m. was Earth Hour. Did you shut off all your lights?

We were at my Aunt and Uncle's house for my cousin's birthday, and what better way to bring out the birthday cake but in a house swathed in candlelight. It was almost romantic, walking around a modern house with only candlelight to light the way. To pass the time, the over 60 crowd discussed at the kitchen table and the younger crowd hung out in the family room where we made sure the candles didn't set anything on fire; we passed the time trying to play a game where you say a word and then everyone has to sing a song with that word in it.

For that hour, it felt intimate as we all huddled close, and when the lights came back on, everything had to adjust, not just our eyes.

Book Review: The Magician's Assistant

The Magician’s Assistant is my third Ann Patchett novel (previously read: Bel Canto and The Patron Saint of Liars). Anne Patchett is nothing if not an exceptional storyteller and skilful in character development. All of her stories could be called slow moving; they are real life stories with life shattering twists that come upon slow and soulfully, not with a head turning spin that makes the reader dizzy.

In the Magician’s Assistant, we discover Sabine, the Assistant and new wife of Magician Parsifal who has died of AIDS, preceding his lover Phan. Sabine was Parsifal’s assistant for 22 years before they were married. Parsifal was a gay man, with no living relatives, and a penchant for antique rugs. His death has caused Sabine’s life to stop moving, as she wanders the house where the three of them lived, the places they entertained people, and the only life, as she knew.

That is until Parsifal’s will uncovers living relatives … a mother and two sisters. Family he told Sabine he never had in a place he never mentioned, Alliance, Nebraska.

In an instant, Sabine’s world gets interrupted by a visit from these relatives who want to meet her and see Parsifal’s resting place. Sabine wants to know why Parsifal decided to shut away that part of his life, and who these people are and what they want of her.

The story starts in Los Angeles, CA and ends up in Alliance, NE where Sabine will go to learn the truth about Parsifal -- the man she thought she knew-- and finally become closer to him.

In the books I’ve read, Ann Patchett’s heroines are deep souls with no inclination for allowing anyone to help them or revealing too much. They seem to be helpless, bouncing around by life’s predicaments, but in truth are strong and willful. In the Patron Saint of Liars her main character--young married and pregnant-- leaves her husband and ends up in the Midwest at a Catholic Home for wayward girls. There she claims the father of her baby is dead and “begins” a new life. In Bel Canto, the opera singer is the lone female stuck in a mansion held by hostages. In this insane microcosm, she discovers what it is to be truly admired and loved, and what it means to lose it.

I didn’t feel as moved by The Magician’s Assistant, as I did about Bel Canto (but then again, I found Bel Canto to be heads and shoulders above any book I’ve read); but if you enjoy Ann Patchett, then you will enjoy this moving story.

If I had a million dollars...

... I would snap up this chair in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This is the Bibliochaise by Italian company Nobody & Co. If you know me, then you know how much I love to read; the very idea of sitting in a chair surrounded by books makes the hairs on my arms stand on end. Leave it to us Italians to have such great style. Now if it were only affordable ... $4800.

Easter

Here's a fact: Easter won't fall on March 23rd again until the year 2160. Will the earth even be around then?

As I look out the window at the snow that's newly blanketed my backyard, I wonder if in the year 2160 global warming will have made it so that every child north of I-88 can find their easter eggs outside, no matter what day Easter falls on?

I can only recall having an Easter green-enough and warm-enough, that my mom hid the eggs outside, only one time. One time in 12 good years of easter egg hunting (no make that 15 years, my younger brother needed egg hunting competition). I imagine that was a special year for my mom, who discovered a whole new playground of hiding spots, other than the usual: in the vase, behind the picture frame, on top of the mirror...

Tony and me with our loot. Pre-requisital gold furniture in background -- c. 1981

My mom always made up the best Easter baskets. They always had tons of toys and candy, wrapped up in colored cellophane. I remember the year I got my favorite shoes: blue, velcro, smurf gym shoes. I never thought I could be any cooler when I was sporting those...

The most poignant part about Easter was the new frilly dress I got to wear. The more frills the better, I was after all a girlie-girl. My family was law-abiding citizens of the no white until Springtime rule. Easter meant banishing the black patent leathers for a new pair of white un-scoffed mary janes which would inevitably be scoffed up by the end of the day. After we took the family photos -- in the living room of course (The only times we went in the living room were for family photos and opening Christmas presents) -- then we were off to church... a part of the day I don't ever remember.

Yellow dress, yellow tights. c.1981

The rest of the day was spent at my grandparents, who never got dressed or went to church because they were the "cooks." The table was always filled with a feast to feed an army -- or an Italian family. It was always happy as we crammed into the table in the kitchen -- getting more and more crammed as we added spouses and more kids to the family.

Then came the finale ... the watching of the "film." The 4-hour long Easter ritual called "The Ten Commandments." Easter wasn't easter unless part of the day was spent in front of the television watching Charlton Heston in a toga. Two parts of the movie always amazed me: 1) I never understood why Moses chose to leave his nice "adopted" mom to live in poverty with those other people and 2) I always thanked god that I wasn't a first born boy each time the angel of death scene came on. What 8 year old isn't spooked into believing in god after seeing that?

So that was Easter circa 1981. Dresses, eggs, easter baskets, chocolate covered marshmallow bunny rabbits, baked ham ... and our good friend, Charleton Heston (aka Moses).

The quest for Happiness

Here's the question: What would make you happier? Buying something for you or for someone else?

If you're like most people, you would have said "yourself." This was the question posed to people during a study reported on NPR yesterday. Most people said they would be happier to buy something for themselves.

The second part of the study put this statement to task: They gave a group of people money (of various amounts). 1/2 of them were supposed to use the money on themselves, and the other 1/2 were to use the money on someone else.

When they questioned the study participants they found ... that the group who bought something for someone else were happier in the end.

The study showed that humans don't really know what makes them happy. And maybe this is why people continue to shop and consume, because they think that inside those shopping bags lie the happiness they were searching for. And this quest for happiness is what fires up the advertisers -- "buy this and you will be happy."

Wait, no you won't.

Artichoke

A few weekends ago, our good friends J & A came over for dinner. We made homemade pizzas with a variety of toppings, but I tried a combination from Todd English's cookbook The Figs Table which was a pizza with olive oil, fig jam, gorgonzola, and prosciotto. It was a hit with our friends.They brought me a bouquet of flowers which had a calla lilly and an artichoke. I had no idea that artichokes grow on stalks -- very thick stalks. I thought it was an ingenious combination, so exotic and fun. I love artichokes!Two weeks have passed and the poor little artichoke completely fell over, so I cut it off and started peeling back the artichoke leaves and what I revealed was a beautiful center. So I put it into a martini glass, and now it's a "floating 'choke."

Radon

We just got our radon remediated... here's the back story:

In October 2005, Matt and I checked our basement for Radon after watching a 20/20 special on it (I really had wished we knew about this sooner and would have done the test before we bought our house). Our test came back as 11.1 pCi/L which is higher than the 4 pCi/L recommended by the EPA. A second test yielded 24.7 pCi/L !!! So then we did a test in our Family Room (also below grade but not as low as the basement) and it was 5.8 pCi/L. So we got some quotes to re-mediate it and we talked to my dad (because doesn't Dad Know Best?). My dad got upset that we believe everything on the news and he said Radon is just a government ploy to get people to spend money. [sigh] He pretty much said if we spent any money on this he would disown us.

So we sat on our quotes vowing to seal the sump pump.

In October 2006, our basement flooded and my dad did some work on the sump pump. After that, we did another test and it came back as 5.8 pCi/L.

Then we sat on it again and just avoided the basement like we had Mr. Rochester's crazy wife stashed down there (Jane Eyre for all you non-Lit majors).

Finally 2008 rolled in and Matt and I made our 1st resolution. Get the radon re-mediated so A) we don't get cancer and B) we can use our basement since we paid for it. So now it's done, this is what it looks like, and my dad doesn't know yet.

I'm on Blogger now

I have disbanded my Typepad blog for this new one on Blogger.

Typepad has much better features, but I've been using Blogger to host my garden blog and I realized that I can live without the fancy-pants features. And Typepad is monthly fee-based and Blogger is free. Since I don't have the kind of blog that "pays" me back, it made since to migrate.

I probably should have done this a while back, but it's a hassle.

The cons are... blogger doesn't have an Importing system so I can't easily import my old posts from Typepad. So I am going to pick and choose the posts that I want on this site (if I ever find time), but for the most part, it'll be like starting from scratch.

Oh, and I changed my title. Rosey Cheeks.

Book Review: Ellington Boulevard

After all the good books I read in 2007, it was only inevitable that I should be in a reading funk in January and February. Every book I picked up felt like lead in my hands and a burden in my book bag. So it must be karma that once I find a good book, then a suite of good books follow. It's like that saying, "When it rains, it pours."

I picked up 5 books at the library recently and have been reading them in order of their size (small to large). Ellington Boulevard was my first.

This is the latest book by Chicagoan Adam Langer, who also wrote Crossing California. CC was one of the books I tried reading in January (as well as last year); it takes place in Chicago (Roger's Park) and for that reason you would think that I would plow through it, but that wasn't the case. As far as I read of this novel, it's 1979 Chicago and it chronicles the lives of some Jewish youths in Roger's Park during the span of the Iran hostage crisis. Maybe it was the characters, but I didn't like them enough to care and I didn't feel like reading it anymore.

Ellington Boulevard -- set in NYC and we know how I love NYC (read: hate NYC) books -- hit me in a completely opposite way. The characters were more caricatures, and I liked them a whole lot better. The plot is simple: Ike Morphy, a former Jazz clarinetist for the group the Funkshuns, and his dog Herbie Mann, live in a rent controlled apartment in an up-and-coming NY neighborhood. When the landlord dies and his son, Mark, inherits the building, he learns that Ike's been living there with a lease equal to a "handshake." That's when the new owner decides to sell the apartments so he start a chain of restaurants, but Ike's not making it easy for Mark or real estate broker Josh, especially when potential buyers Darrell and Rebecca come to look at it.

Rebecca is a new editor for a tanking magazine and her husband is a perpetual doctoral student and spends all day avoiding his dissertation and chasing after a pretty red-head he met in the library -- who has a story of her own. Each chapter tells a little more of each person's story and how all their lives in NYC are all intersecting through this one apartment.

The seller is a recovering addict who's trying to make over his life, but he's still pretty sleazy. The real estate broker is an aspiring actor who fell into the lucrative world of real estate. The mortgage broker opens a bottle of champagne whenever the economy reports job losses. The girlfriend is a writer who lost her creativity and now only writes stories like "This annoying guy is trying to pick me up in the library, what's up with that" -- or something like that.

The character list is unending and each is interesting - whether likable or not - in their own right. But Darrell had to be my favorite: the son of professor's in Madison, WI, he's the perpetual doctoral student who downloads music instead of writing his dissertation, bullshits his TA work, and resents his wife for having wealthy parents. He's an insecure slacker, completely annoying, and I loved him. To me, he felt like the only real character; maybe because he was the one

The style was reminiscent of the Bill Fitzhugh novels I've been reading -- where the multiple characters are all connected in ways they didn't know they were. And they effect each other's outcomes without ever even meeting each other. The novel starts of slow, describing the setting and people, then you learn how they all intersect, and finally the face-paced ending where it jumps from story to story. So it was a style I liked, and I can't say he copied it since I'm sure Fitzhugh got it from someone else ...

Flipping Out

Matt and I just discovered how not to fight anymore.

The other night, we were all warm under the covers ... too warm. That's when Matt said, "did you lower the heat?" On days that I work from home, I run the thermostat manually, otherwise it's on a program. So this was one of those days and there's no way we're sleeping wit the heat on 65 (more like 55 for us).

"Can you shut it off?" I begged.

"No, you turned it on..." It went back and forth until we agreed there was only one way to solve WHO was getting out of the warm bed to shut the heat. And that decision needed to be made by George Washington -- the quarter, that is.

So Matt flipped, I called tails, and I won. So Matt had to get up and shut the heat and that was the end of the story.

So my advice to all you fighting couples: when in a pickle, flip the nickel.