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Little Children
Yesterday, Maya went back to school after two weeks off for winter break. I took one last day of vacation, and Ted had the day off as well, so we decided to go see an adult film (no, not THAT kind of movie!), meaning one with adult themes, an actual dialog, some sex and some very disturbing issues. We went to see Little Children, which is based on the novel by Tom Perotta, who also wrote the novel on which the wicked Election was based. Little Children is mainly the story of two characters, Sarah and Brad. Sarah (Kate Winslet) is the mother of a young girl, Lucy, and is…
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Evolution?
The other day, while listening to a backlogged To the Best of Our Knowledge (TTBOOK) on my beloved iPod, I was struck yet again by the argument between the creationists and the Darwinists. TTBOOK has been running a series called From Electrons to Enlightenment, and if you’re interested in how religion and science work together and where they argue bitterly, you might find this series interesting. Anyway, I was yet again hearing people argue about the beginning of the universe, and of life on Earth. Was the Earth and life on it created by God, in 6 days, as described in the Old Testament? Was the big bang the cause…
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Happy New Year!
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Happy Birthday to Me!
Today is my 41st birthday…that seems wild, since I don’t feel any more mature than I did when I was 21 or 22…maybe that’s the secret to the fountain of youth…stay immature! For my birthday dinner tonight, I asked Ted if he would get me cracked crab with garlic butter, some wine (or maybe champagne?) and some french bread. He decided to do me one better on the French Bread, and get garlic noodles from Thanh Long. Oh my. They are SO yummy. So, yesterday, we drove into the city in search of garlic noodles…but we thought, why go all of the way to San Francisco, our favorite city, and…
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The Memory Keepers Daughter
I’m about 2/5 of the way through this book. Reading this has been a difficult task for me…not that it would be for everyone, but it was for me. Those of you who have read my blog for awhile know that I didn’t know my father or my sisters growing up, that I met them when I was 21 (dad) and 22 (sisters), so I missed out on a lot of their lives, as they did mine. One thing that I missed out on was that I had an uncle, Bobby, who had Downs Syndrome. He was my father’s older brother, and he died before I had a chance to…
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Winter Classics Challenge
Now that I’ve finished the From the Stacks: Winter Reading Challenge, I’m ready to start another one (Am I crazy? Perhaps). This challenge is to read 5 classics during the months of January and February. A classic is a slippery thing to describe, so I’ll just say it has to be a renowned book, and the person who started this challenge said it should be at least 50 years old. I came across the challenge on Lotus Reads, but it was started at A Reader’s Journal So, without further ado, here are my 5 classics: The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton. This seems a fitting choice for this challenge,…
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Julie and Julia
OK, here I am…I just finished the last of the 5 books for my From the Stacks Winter Reading Challenge. I had saved Julie and Julia for last, figuring it would be a light, fun, breezy read, which might suit me well after some of the heavier topics I had thus far covered. I was right. To be honest, I knew very little about this book/blog/idea before the book was given to me as a gift last Christmas. I knew that the author, Julie Powell, lived in New York, that she decided to make every recipe in Julia Childs’ famous cookbook, Mastering The Art of French Cooking, 524 recipes, in…
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What I’m From
I saw this meme, if you want to call it that, here. I’m not positive of how to work with it, but we’ll see how it turns out. If you want to try, there’s a template for this exercise, which you can find here. I am from San Francisco Sourdough bread on picnics, from the smell of bacon in the morning, and saltine crackers and kool-aid as an afternoon snack. I am from 7-11 and Tower Records on Christmas day, my money burning a hole in my pocket. I am from the many houses over the years…a homestead outside of Fairbanks, Alaska, with no running water, and coal or oil…
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Christmas Dinner…
Merry Christmas Everyone! I was tagged awhile ago by ML at Zee’s Space to do this meme…the idea is that you’re serving a bunch of foodies, maybe even food bloggers, a wonderful dinner. What do you serve? Well, I certainly don’t have the guts to have a bunch of food bloggers over to my tiny kitchen, with whatever food I could muster, but instead, I’m inviting you all, OK? So, here’s my menu: We’ll start with a small cup of lobster bisque, served with some fresh tarragon sprinkled on top, and Veuve Cliquot Champagne, because everything tastes better with Veuve Cliquot. I linked to a recipe that says it’s for…
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A Question…
Me: Why do you think some people start their Christmas shopping in August, while others wait until December 23rd? Ted: Because some people are women, while others are men. Me: That sounds about right.
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Untitled…because I can’t think of anything clever…
Gina recently did a post, which she found in a couple of different places, where she listed the first sentence from the first post of the month in 2006. I’m game, so here goes: January: I was surfing blogs and came across this one, via Bitch PhD, but the post was here. (It appears that this was my first meme, and I wasn’t used to all of the blog ettiquette yet…I didn’t link to Bitch PhD, and my link to the first blog was just to the blog, not to the post in question. Ah, back in the days of my early blogging…) February: Looks like HBO has a new…
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Hair Envy
Those of you with Naturally Curly Hair, and you know who you are, you vixens like Frieda from Charlie Brown fame, or miss Shakira here…please stop bemoaning the frizz factor, the fact that to get it straight, you have to blow dry it. Don’t you realize that the women with the BEST straight hair (Asian and Native American excepted, because their hair is course enough to be straight AND thick) are really naturally curly folks with flat irons or hair dryers? I know it’s a pain in the butt, but at least your hair has BODY, and it doesn’t lie there like a limp noodle, begging for more product, wishing…
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Holidays at our House
It’s the 6th night of Hanukkah, and we’ve lit the menorah, and the candles are burning low…the Christmas tree is lit, and there are depressing Aimee Mann Christmas songs playing. Just another holiday at our house. A few years ago, we decided, for fun, to start celebrating Hanukkah. Neither Ted nor I know of any Jewish folks on either side of our families, so this is a pretty secular celebration of a religious holiday, but we kind of felt like since we’re not Christian, and we celebrate Christmas, it would be nice to expose Maya to some of the other traditions of the season, and heck, what’s not to like…
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Almost Ready….
Christmas Cards sent….check Christmas Gifts purchased…check Christmas Gifts wrapped….check Christmas Gifts mailed…check Hanukkah celebration attended…check Latkes and jelly donuts eaten…check Menorah candles lit…in progress Scrooged watched….check Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer watched…check Tree decorated…check The Year Without a Santa Claus watched….check (love those Miser brothers…they’re too much!) Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town watched…check A Charlie Brown Christmas watched…check How The Grinch Stole Christmas watched…check Yummy treats baked and eaten…check Holiday luncheon for work to attend…later today Lunch with Cherry, and yummy cookies to receive…tomorrow Go to San Francisco to see A Christmas Carol…not yet – This weekend or not at all Plan dishes to bring to Christmas dinner…not yet…
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Good News for Mango Lovers
While I took Genevieve and my beloved iPod for a walk yesterday, I was listening to To the Best of Our Knowledge. The final segment of the show was an interview with Madhur Jaffrey, author of Climbing the Mango Tree: A Memoir of a Childhood in India. I haven’t heard of Ms. Jaffrey before, but she is considered the “Julia Child of India”, and she is also an accomplished actress. In her memoir, and in the interview I was listening to, she talks about growing up as part of a huge extended family, where there were often 40 people at dinner time, and how she never even knew that her…