Deep thoughts on shallow topics

On Saturday we went to the theatre (yes, the full-price theatre, because we were too impatient to wait for it to come out in the cheap theatre) to catch the matinee of Ocean’s Twelve. Okay, so maybe the plot was less believable than the first time around, but the movie was still incredibly well-made. I kept my eyes open, expecting a surprise at every turn, and still didn’t know what was really going on. Very funny, too. But what strikes me as odd about modern movies is that no matter how general an audience the feature presentation is intended for, they always manage to sneak in at least one scary preview. As soon as the scary people started showing up, I closed my eyes. Michael leaned over and whispered, ‘I don’t care what it’s about – I don’t want to talk about it later!’ Ha! He is referring to my habit of analyzing things that don’t make sense until I have them figured out. (For instance, recently I woke up early on a Saturday morning, struck by a brilliant thought. ‘Michael! I know how you could avoid getting attacked by hordes of mating anacondas in the middle of the jungle if your numbers were dwindling and you couldn’t count on your buddies to shoot them before they latch on to you and start squeezing!’ The problem, you see, is not the venom – they bite you only to get a good grip, so they can wrap themselves around you and start crushing. Usually they are too quick for you to get your arms free, so your arms are pinned to your side and you can’t fight them off or shoot them before they crush you. The solution, obviously, is to strap sharp metal discs to your arms, such that anything that wraps itself around you and starts tightening slices itself to death in the process.)

Later, however, a thought re: latest scary preview occurred to me. ‘You know what the problem was with that movie? The basic premise was that heaven wouldn’t accept him, and hell wants him. That construct doesn’t provide any dramatic tension. For any story to be effective, there has to be conflict and tension. Now, it would be different if BOTH heaven and hell wanted him, or if NEITHER would accept him. But as it stands, there is no dilemma, and hence no story or plot.’ ‘Good,’ Michael said. ‘So we’re not going to talk about it any more, are we?’

A light shineth in the darkness…and the darkness comprehended it not

Hurray for sunlight and laughter on the shortest and darkest day of the year!

Here are some interesting facts about today:

Today is the winter solstice. After today, the days will get longer, although the change in daylight from day to day will be gradual, picking up speed as we approach the equinox. The winter and summer solstices come from a word meaning ‘To stand still,’ because the sun seems to stand still on the plane of the elliptic. Hence the gradual change in daylight.

Although the days get longer, the cold intensifies through January and February. You can remember this little aphorism:

When the days begin to lengthen,
The cold begins to strengthen.

It is dead week at the office. Fortunately vendors and reps are still bringing us edibles on a daily basis. One need hardly bring in a lunch anymore.

A party is a party…but a Christmas party! –

Catherine, having been thwarted in her plans to wear a long blonde wig to our Valentine’s Day party, is planning with all enthusiasm a costume party for New Year’s Eve. In theory I love the idea of a masquerade, although I can’t think of a suitable disguise. It would be really clever if Michael and I could find a theme and dress up to match – like the husband and wife from American Gothic, only that’s way too much trouble. I think I’ll dress up as a pregnant woman with a small pillow stuffed under her shirt.

Catch a falling star

Last night we went for a walk to catch a glimpse of the famed meteor shower. This was rumoured to be the best of the year, better even than the one in August. Although the peak was supposed to be between midnight and dawn, during which there were supposed to be in excess of two shooting stars a minute, we hoped to see a good show before bedtime.

It was bitterly cold. We bundled up, and we were still shivering. But the wonder was well worth the effort. It was a dark and moonless night, and the winter sky shone brightly. (I loved learning, in astronomy class long ago, why it is that there are so many bright stars in the winter sky: because in the winter we are facing outwards, toward the dark emptiness of space, but since our solar system is located on the edge of one of the spiral arms of the galaxy, we are close to the stars in the spiral arm. In the summer, we are facing into the centre of the galaxy, but first we gaze across a vast emptiness of darkness before the Milky Way. So in the summer, you have a splendid sprawl of hazy brilliance but not so many stars of high magnitude, whereas in the winter you have a spectacular line-up of bright stars.) We walked for three minutes before the wind became bitterly cold and we turned back. Before going in we stood for a little while gazing up at the sky. And there was a glorious shooting star which we both saw quite distinctly! It all seemed very magical. 'What are we supposed to do, make a wish or something?' Michael asked. 'I don't know, something special,' I said. So we kissed, and then ran indoors to warmth, blessed warmth.

Speaking of which, plans are underway (we're 2.5 weeks out now, that's a head start compared to last year) for some kind of New Year's Eve party for our circle of newly-married friends, a.k.a. People Who Have Someone To Kiss At Midnight.

Overheard in front of the mirror

Michael: That’s a lovely dress you’re wearing. And a lovely lady inside.
Me: Ha, ha! Maybe two!
Michael: Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. We could have a really ugly kid.
Me: How can you say such a thing? Of course our child will be beautiful!
Michael: You never know what kind of recessive genes we have floating around inside of us, love.

Christmas parties, past and present

For the second year in a row I missed the HSLDA Christmas party. I heard it was really great. I hope y'all enjoyed it.

Through no fault of my own Michael has never been. I invited him two years ago, but he turned me down (like a bedspread, as Bertie would say). Something about having to attend a friend's wedding that weekend.

Friday night found us well consoled for missing out on the biggest party of the year, though. We went out to dinner with Benjamin & Amanda and Ron & Catherine to celebrate Benjamin's birthday. The subject of the HSLDA Christmas party came up, and Catherine and I revisited her intern skit of '99, HSLDA Pages of History. 'Remember Mike Smith's page about Scott Woodruff and Doggie Auschwitz?' Ron and Michael looked on while we dissolved into laughter trying to explain how you could always tell when a Mike Smith page was about to come over the airwaves.

Recent history of HSLDA Christmas parties and respective highlights:

1999: The Y2K bug skit. Intern Pages. The first of Tech's unforgettable GroupWise Guys skits (Answer: three walls and a door. Question: What's all that John Moore needs to have a complete office?). Receptionist Jam, where Sherri Wilson donned sunglasses while we jammed to headphones.

2000: In Re: Bear Family, with Darren as a judge, Amy as a redhead, and Dana as a ditzy blonde. Tech's NitWit Mover's spoof of our traumatic move. Sara's first HSLDA Christmas party, and her 'surprise' announcement.

2001: The Twelve Working Days of Christmas ('Yes, that's H as in Harry Potter, S as in Shrek, L as in Legally Blonde, D as in...hello? Hello?'). The conference skit (Kerin Bloom as a gum-chewing Chicken a la King sales rep - 'Elvis Brand chicken'; Jonathan Bechtle as the Airline Nazi - 'No strangulating objects, including shoelaces - this is a velcro-only flight').

2002: New Employee Orientation ('You don't want to work down that hallway. Here's a can of Romance Guard - $10.99 on E-bay.') Tech Dept. runs HSLDA for a day (John Moore pours MiracleGro on Bill Bloom's head; John Bullock pays members to join HSLDA).

And that's where my first-hand experience drops off. I did hear, however, that this year's party was the biggest yet, that the skits were funny and my own brother did a cameo in one of them, and that Jim Mason won the Co-Laborer of the Year award. I sincerely hope, since all the skits were taped this year, to get a copy someday.

Sunday night found us at our Sunday school's Christmas party. We met at the church, had more than enough food (as always happens at potlucks), and enjoyed a rousing white elephant gift exchange. It was so satisfying, because we brought two gifts that seemed pretty blah to us - but which were a surprising hit and got stolen to the limit - and came away with a brand-new DVD. 'Tis the season!

On the ancient Greeks

As part of their schoolwork, my brothers are now presenting some form of public speaking every week: their choice of a speech, a recitation, a poetry reading (yeah, right), etc. 7-year-old Thomas wrote out his own speech:

GReeKS WeRe PeOPLe WHO WeReNt EXACtLY SUPeRStItIOUS BeCAUSe tHe AZteCS AND MAYANS SACRIFICeD HUMANS BUt GReeKS SACRIFICeD ANIMALS WItH tHeIR GODS tHEY WeRe A LIttLe BIt SUPeRStItIOUS BUt tHE MAYANS AND tHe ASteCS WeRe BAD tAKING OUT BEAtING HeARtS tHe ANIMALS tHAt tHe GReeKS SACRIFICeD WeRe SINLeSS BUt tHe GReeK StILL KILLeD tHeM.

In a recent email, Joseph told me, 'We are now studying the ancient Greeks, soon to be ancient Romans.' Apparently he thought the ancient Greeks actually turned into Romans, instead of being conquered by them.

Road rage and deadly force

We had an interesting conversation while shopping over the weekend. Traffic was busy, and at one point Michael switched lanes, where there was a perfectly good opening. He used his turn signal, and traffic was moving slowly enough that no one had to slam on brakes to make room for us. However, the driver behind us did not appreciate our invasion of what he apparently considered his privacy bubble, and expressed his disapproval most strongly and sustainedly. He honked loudly and repeatedly, flashed his lights at us, and gunned his engine while tail-gating us closely, for perhaps fifteen seconds. 'Temper, temper!' I said. 'Bite me,' Michael said.

Nothing further came of it, fortunately, but Michael remarked later, 'So if he had started ramming us, would that have occasioned me hopping out and shooting him?'

'Surely not!' was my first reaction. 'I don't think that would count as self-defense.'

Michael pointed out that the supersize truck was substantially bigger than our car, and could have totaled our car had it gotten violent. Such aggression would constitute deadly force. I wasn't sure that we would really have been at risk of death under such a circumstance. After all, we were seatbelted in, right?

'If he had really started coming after us, he could have rammed us, set the car spinning, and easily crumpled through the body of the car, killing us. Or he could have rammed the car off the overpass.'

'Well, but by the time you had jumped out of the car to shoot him, you would be free of the car and the imminent danger would have passed, right?'

'If we were outside of the car, we would be sitting ducks. It's much easier to run down and kill a pedestrian. So if we were getting out of the car, it would be to stop him.'

Next I thought that jumping out of the car, smashing the driver's window, and yelling, 'Stop or I'll shoot!' would be enough to halt his rampage. (I'm always of the opinion that the mere sight of a gun should stop an attacker dead in his tracks. Michael always reminds me that the only way you can be sure of stopping an attacker dead in his tracks with a gun is by shooting him. 'If you pull a gun, you have to be prepared to use it. Pulling a gun without intent to use it is worse than useless - it's an invitation to wrest the gun from you.') I also suggested the possibility of dialing 911 as soon as the attack started - 'Help! I'm being rammed by a vehicle - license plate ### - if I get out he'll run me down and if I stay he'll wreck my car, not to mention me - what should I do?' Michael observed that there wouldn't be time to get any police help from a 911 call, and that you don't call 911 to ask permission to shoot someone in self-defense.

Hmmm. Is puzzlement. If I were certain that we were at risk of being killed, then certainly shooting in self-defense would be justified. Next I thought that the problem arose from determining the intent of the aggressive driver. But even that doesn't cover it. He could be so angry that he was actually out to kill us, or he could just be expressing his anger such that killing us was an unintended side-effect. 'Deadly force' doesn't mean force applied with the intent to make you dead, but force with the capacity to make you dead.

Well, I guess it's a good thing he didn't start ramming us.

A study in exasperation

Last weekend Michael and I finally purchased a 'new' TV. This is something we've been looking forward to for the last year, ever since we decided that a TV didn't make the first cut of priorities from all the wedding present gift cards and such. We wanted to get the right model, so we took our time and planned carefully and saved up and researched for the perfect TV that would meet our needs, be nice enough to want to keep for many years, and be modern enough to accommodate the changing technology demands of the next few years without being so close to the cutting that it would be horrifically expensive. Our current TV turns ten years old this year, and isn't compatible with modern DVDs - older videos that have been made into DVDs without getting digitally remastered, such as our A&E P&P or Bertie & Jeeves, work fine, but most new releases flicker badly, so we pretty much have to watch anything on DVD on the office computer. So this will definitely be a welcome Christmas present to each other.

There we were in the electronics department, and Michael found the perfect model - big enough, but not so big as to be pretentious; HDTV compatible, which is apparently going to be important a few years down the road; sleek and silver; and best of all, discounted at a great price. It was an open box model, meaning that it had been purchased and then returned, so it couldn't be re-sold as new, even though it was essentially brand-new. I do love bargains. We tried to take it home that day, but it didn't fit in my car, so Michael came back the next day with his truck. When we finally got it home and unwrapped it, Michael noticed several scratches and other minor cosmetic defects on the front and side panels that certainly weren't there when we saw it in the store. Obviously, this must have occurred when they tried unsuccessfully to load it up the first time - I must admit, I had my doubts when I saw them trundling the TV out there on a barren dolly, with no padding or wrapping at all. 'I wonder whether we could call them up and demand a further discount?' Michael pondered. Good idea - we even looked at the label, and it was clearly labeled Used but clearly NOT labeled Damaged. Certainly if it had looked defective in the store, we would have asked about getting a cosmetic discount. So yesterday when I got home from work, I gamely sat down in front of the computer and dialed the store.

By the end of the next hour, I had decided that, regardless of how willing I was to overlook or forgive any cosmetic imperfections in our new TV's sleek silver exterior, I was by jingo going to demand a discount just for the time spent in addressing the problem. The saga became reminiscent of The Place That Sends You Mad, from The Twelve Tasks of Asterix. The trouble was that I was deeply into the mire before I fully grasped the absurdity and ridiculousness of the situation, so it wasn't until about half an hour in that I started writing down times, phone calls, and names.

It started innocently enough. 'Hi. I need to talk to someone in the Electronics Department,' I said brightly enough, after spending about three minutes navigating the phone system and finally getting a live person, the operator. I was transferred and the call was lost. Repeat scenario (another three minutes). This time I made sure to ask that she call over there first and make sure someone was there to answer. Turns out the electronics department's phone was out of order (at this point, early on, I was still amused enough to chuckle privately at the irony of the electronic department's phone being out of order, who of all people should be able to fix or replace it) and all the associates over there were busy anyway. 'Well, then I need to speak to a manager.' I was told I was being transferred to customer service. Hold. Then, 'I'm sorry, but that line is busy. Please hold while I try again.' (A recording.) The attempt was not successful. 'We are unable to transfer your call. Please call again later.' Argh. Another three minutes. This time the question of the TV was shadowed by the question of the phone system. 'Hi, I called just a moment ago. I need to speak to someone in electronics, but don't transfer me there because their phone doesn't work. Please get me a manager and make sure someone picks up.' 'Of course, ma'am.' And we had the same scenario all over again. Three more minutes. This time I am more explicit. 'I need to speak with a manager, and I need for you not to transfer me, but to put me on hold. I have called several times, and each time I call the call is lost.' So I finally got to talk to someone, and was about a minute into explaining my tale - to which he was sympathetic, at least: 'Oh, dear. That's not good. Yes, let me look this up for you. Do you have your receipt? What was the transaction ID? Let me put you on hold a moment while I look this up'- and there I was, cut off by the same busy recording. The situation was clearly becoming unreal. I called again. At this point I began taking names, so that there would be a clear paper trail should history repeat itself. I started from square one again with some other manager or sales associate, who was likewise sympathetic but with whom my conversation was again cut short by the untimely interruption of the busy recording. At this point I became convinced that it was not just the electronics department with a defective phone. 'Hi. I have been trying to call for the last forty-five minutes-' 'I'm so sorry, ma'am!' (Very friendly, helpful people! All of them! They just have a wretched phone system!) 'That's okay, but I just need to get through to someone. Please page a manager, make sure someone live picks up, and do not try to transfer the call.' No good. I am halfway through explaining my situation when the phone cuts me off. By now I am more than a little pipped. We go through the whole voice mail saga again. Once again I talk to a live person, who asks cheerfully, 'How may I direct your call?' Okay, a normal conversation is obviously not going to happen on this turf. 'Hello. I need you to take my name and number, and have a manager call me back immediately on a cell phone. I have spent the last hour on the phone trying to reach someone, and your phone system has consistently cut me off. Please have a manager call me back immediately.' 'All right ma'am, hold just one moment.' 'No, don't put me on hol....' No use. Busy. I repeat this scenario a few times, until I can get someone to believe me when I say, 'Do not transfer me and do not put me on hold. I need you to take my name and number and have a manager call me back.' Then this paragon of a helpful person reveals to me that it is not a function of the hold, nor of the transfer, but of the fact that the phone line cuts off after three minutes when the call comes in through the switchboard. I am floored. My problem cannot be explained in less than three minutes. 'That is why I need you to take my name and number and have a manager return my call on a valid line.' She transfers me to someone who offers to page a manager for me, and I barely manage to leave my number before the phone cuts off. At this point I conclude to leave well enough alone and hope that someone with whom I left my number will make sure a manager calls me back.

I cannot recall ever experiencing a runaround as bad as this before. And I was glad to note that even though I was frustrated with the situation, I was never inclined to be mad with the people themselves. Michael came in toward the end of some of my conversations, and I even asked him, 'Did you think I sounded mad? Because I wasn't, really, and was trying to achieve the right tone of firmness without irritation.' I've been on the answering end of a phone enough to know that angry callers accomplish nothing by belligerence or impatience, besides making helpless underlings who had nothing to do with the original problem feel miserable.

Perseverance pays off. Later that evening I did indeed get a call back from a manager who apologised handsomely for the confusion and offered an additional 10% off the purchase. I think that was worth an hour of my life.

Remember Pearl Harbor

Also remember Earl Hall's birthday, which falls on a most memorable date. Well do I remember decorating his office four years ago today with Lindsay, Kevin, Nathan, and Megan - no, no, we decorated his office with streamers and balloons and confetti. His first comment on coming in the next morning: 'What a mess.'

Also memorable is Daniel and Rachel's wedding, two years ago today. Were they the first PHC students to get married? Well, to each other, anyway. A winter wedding is such a gamble, but if it comes off - as it did splendidly - it can be so grand. Snow on the ground and sun in the sky and Christmas decorations up all over the dining hall...it was the perfect day for it.

Correct me if I'm wrong...

...but judging from the previews, the new Tim Allen movie Christmas with the Kranks looks really, really stupid.

My cell phone battery has been running down something awful lately. It seems unable to sustain a charge for any length of time and is constantly running on low battery. Apparently this is because of something called battery memory retention, or something like that, which I knew about in the context of laptop computer batteries because I once sat through a whole meeting on it but which I never thought to apply to cell phone batteries. Basically if you plug in your cell phone before the battery is completely run down, your battery will remember how low it ran and set that level as its new 'dead battery' level. So gradually you lose battery charge. This does not make sense. I don't want my cell phone battery to remember things like this. How about if my car worked like this? I explained this to Michael. 'Say I'm half a tank down, and it's not going to be convenient for me to fuel up for awhile. So if the car worked like my cell phone, if I fill up the car now, I lose half my tank capacity! And every time I decide not to tempt Fate by running as close to empty as possible - poof! That much more tank capacity gone! What this battery memory thing does, in essence, is to punish thinking ahead! By that reasoning, the Foolish Virgins were on the right track after all, not buying extra oil until they had run out of the current batch!'

Rudolph the Unlikely Social Hit

The legend of Rudolph and Santa’s sleigh is charming, if you like that sort of thing, and as long as you don’t believe in it; and it’s kind of fun to be able to rattle off all of Santa’s reindeer. But the song itself has always annoyed me for being a completely unrealistic portrayal of human social interactions. (Perhaps that’s a bit of an unfounded gripe, considering that the song is actually about animals. Okay, okay! But start imposing human characteristics on animals, and it’s impossible to miss the role-playing.)

These beastly little beasts are obviously portraying young children, perhaps at the junior high stage. They have their snobby little pecking order and their exclusive Santa clique going strong, when along comes an outsider who wants to play with them. Not only is it an outsider, though, but it’s a problematic outsider, who sports a very obvious physical abnormality. You just know Rudolph couldn’t be any more of an outcast if he had worn glasses. So far, so standard. But then along comes an authority figure and picks out Rudolph to be Special, and suddenly all the little beasts love him? How ridiculous is that? The sharks circling for blood are only going to be more likely to despise and reject him now that he’s become Teacher’s Pet. Did Santa really think he was doing Rudolph a favour by picking him out for special attentions?

What bothers me about this yarn is that little kids who don’t know any better are going to identify with poor little Rudolph. Who wouldn’t? He’s the underdog, the unlikely hero – of course we’re all rooting for him. But the Santa myth holds out the illusion that the answer to unpopularity lies in securing the attentions of someone important, someone who cares, someone who can elevate you to prominence, at which point social affirmation and adoration will simply pour in. So this insidious little jingle reinforces the notion that it matters what other people think, that it’s important to be liked, and that our self-worth is directly linked to how important and accepted we are in the eyes of our peers. Why can’t the poor little lambs be taught, instead, that their identities are not irrevocably linked to who likes them or to temporal external physical characteristics, but are inextricably rooted in the truth and nature of their Creator? Why set them up to dream about the great Santa tapping them to lead his sleigh and put an end to all their troubles when the Lord of all Creation has already chosen them from before the beginning of time to be His children?

So I guess what really bothers me about this song is that the Santa myth attempts to cover for the stark realities of fallen human nature with humanistic feel-good platitudes about universal love and peace. It’s substituting a false god for the overwhelming greatness and sufficiency of the Creator, and that wears a little thin.

Whew. I don’t know where all that came from. I’m sure it’s a perfectly harmless little jingle.

Ah, distinctly I remember...

Wednesday night is my office Christmas party. Nothing spectacular, just going out to dinner at a nice restaurant, which of course is fun and all that but doesn't involve any skits or barbershop quartets. I looked up the place - Little Gardens - online this morning, and it appears to be quite the pacifist place - the website described in great detail the 'anti-bellum' plantation-style estate, which was perfect for weddings. Hmm. Well, it looks elegant, anyway, and should afford a good feast. We don't know yet when Michael's office Christmas party is because it still hasn't been decided. Last year I think we found out the week before.

Christmas shopping and decorating continue apace. We have made great strides, but my attention span has waned considerably, and we still don't have the tree up. We decorated up at the office on Friday, and that put me into a jolly holiday mood, all enthused and inspired to do up our house. Somehow the weekend slipped away without much progress on that front, though. On the plus side, the house is clean and we're supplied with a fresh supply of edibles for the week. Priorities, priorities!

Mitch came up to Michael at Sunday school yesterday and said, 'Hey, if you need any help with putting up your Christmas lights...don't call me!' Apparently they had a real decorating push this weekend, to mixed success. Mitch described renting an extension ladder to string the lights along the peak of the eaves, and recounted how he had finally attached the last of them, climbed down the ladder, and pulled it away from the house...only to have the ladder catch on the lights and rip them off. The lights came crashing into the driveway and half the bulbs shattered. Our Sunday school leader chimed in that the exact thing had happened to him, too! So, Christmas light enthusiasts, take warning!

Over the weekend we went out to the cheap theatre to see Captain Sky and the World of Tomorrow. It was a very cleverly done 40s-era comic book adventure. I loved the classic 40s hats and styles and the black-and-white gritty cinemactography: it was a unique juxtaposition of futuristic technology and retro culture. There was an occasional big, big D, but overall it was very clean.

Get it right already

BlogSpot has apparently been having some problems lately. Earlier this week I had the dickens of a time trying to post comments on various blogs, and ended up giving up on most of the attempts. For the last two days I've been trying to Enable my Profile, to no avail. I wasn't going to make much of it, just show my real name and specify my gender (both already apparent), but it doesn't take when I click the Save My Profile button. Do these people think I have no life? I may check my blog ten times a day, but do I have the time to mess with the behind-the-scenes nonsense? As if!

I do love hearing non-stop Christmas music all day long. I love the Christmas carols and the jolly holiday spirit dispensed. But I wish some of the recordings wouldn't try so hard to push the envelope of creativity. I suppose they're trying to give a unique twist to a song that's been released in at least thirty other Christmas albums already - give it some deformity so it will be personalised with a mark of ownership. But honestly, the reason the song is such a classic must be that it was written right the first time! Therefore it is not necessary to scatter rests, holds, and (most annoying of all) innumerable superfluous flourishes and warbles wantonly throughout the music. Any artist who tries to cram more than three notes into the one-syllable 'of' from 'O Little Town of Bethlehem' is overusing his poetic license, in my opinion.

So...do you approve or disapprove of going up a whole step on 'This' in 'What Child is This?' as opposed to the traditional half-step?

Growing and glowing

That's how one pregnancy book describes the second trimester. Well, we have the growing part down all right. We have officially moved past the 'Blah stage' into the 'Ravenously hungry stage.'

Speaking of food (though it doesn't take the mention of food to make me think of it) I am all set for the Christmas festal board. Right now I'm in the mood for eggnog and almond roca. I am heartily missing this season from the days of yore when I'd breeze through the office every day and not even need to pack a lunch for the over-abundance of treats scattered throughout the various lunch rooms. Ginger assures me that very soon, the vendors here will start bringing in Christmas baskets. I hope the vendors have good taste and bring us a sparkling array of crackers and cheese, nuts, meats and sausage balls, cookies, chocolates, popcorn, and fruits. I could certainly do with an overflowing cornucopia.

More Random Lists

Names I Was Surprised to Discover Were In The Bible:

Malcolm
Jared
Jason
Jemima

Useful Things I Have Learned From Michael:

* Do not throw away the plastic liner from the graham cracker crust you buy from the store. When you finish filling the pie crust, the liner, inverted, becomes the lid.
* Use knuckles instead of fingertips for pushing things like microwave buttons, elevator summons, etc. This not only preserves the cleanliness of your fingertips in case you need to rub your eyes later on, but ensures that you won't go around leaving your fingerprints on surfaces.

Not-So-Useful Things I Have Learned From Michael:

* Two of the friends on Friends are brother and sister.

It's a lo-o-o-ng day in the world...

The afternoon is slowly crawling by, as if it just emerged from the primeval sludge and hasn't fully developed its legs yet. Molasses and tar pits! Why can't it be 5:00 already?

At least the radio is playing Christmas music. At last.

I really like secular Christmas music. I love the Christian Christmas carols, of course, but there's something catching about the classic Christmas tunes. Two years ago we watched the movie White Christmas, starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. It was a great movie, although the song I remember the most wasn't the classic White Christmas but Love, You Didn't Do Right By Me.

Love, you didn't do right by me.
As they say in the song,
You done me wrong.

Somehow it suited my cynical streak, delivering just the perfect dose of Bah humbug.

Which reminds me, we have to go log a Christmas tree this weekend and it's going to cost us at least five times as much as trees cost in Oregon. Can you believe that when we lived next to a tree farm, we could cut our own tree for $1/ft? It's almost enough to drive one to artificial trees with fake fresh pine scent. And we also need to string white Christmas lights on our house. Why didn't we string lights up last year and just leave them on? Blah humbug.

Unmetred verse

For some reason I felt inspired to toss off a few lines of rant and rave, a la Ogden Nash.

Why do people approaching doorways at the same time as me feel compelled to give me such a wide berth?
Do they automatically assume that just because I am pregnant, I must necessarily have a substantial girth?
It’s so much nicer when people tell me I am not showing at all.
Such compliments are calculated to bring a pleased flush to cheeks that were not glowing at all.
It’s said that trials and tribulations and such experiences can expand our borders, metaphorically;
But that that principle is turning out to be a bit too literal in my case I can state, categorically.

Dragville

There is a home video that Leah and I watched when we went out to Oregon for Thanksgiving 2001, of Uncle Brad and Aunt Rosanne doing a 'candid' interview. With typical quirky Brad humour, the scene in question consisted of Brad and Rosanne sitting side by side staring blankly at the camera; somehow Brad had manipulated it so that there was the clip art of a big red heart cut-out surrounding them. 'Well, here we are, Rosie,' Brad began. 'Sitting in the middle of a big red heart.' 'Oh, groan,' Rosanne said. 'It's Monday tomorrow. Blah. Pit City. Dragville. Monday!' 'You might as well get used to it,' Brad said. 'I bet you spend at least 1/7 of your time on Mondays. In fact, you probably spend ten years of your life on Mondays!' That's a great line to quote whenever I'm inclined to feel azure about Mondays. This Monday wouldn't be so bad if it didn't follow up on four days of partying and laziness. There's nothing like a four-day weekend to spoil a good work ethic.

On Thursday morning we got up (not too early, thankfully; last whirlwind visit to Virginia we swore off early morning flights once and for all) and finished packing, and flew into Reagan National Airport. It was only the second time I'd ever landed there, and the first time was unintentional. We had a great Thanksgiving dinner of turkey and co. with family, and then sat around digesting all evening. Michael and some of the boys set up a game of Axis and Allies. Toward the evening we ran out to HSLDA to look around and see how much had changed, and endeavoured to buy a paper on the way home to ascertain the sales. There was no paper to be had, not even for ready money. We spent nearly an hour chasing geese, and finally returned empty-handed. So much for the biggest shopping day of the year.

Friday we spent with relatives and friends alike. Saturday the menfolk went to see the Air and Space Museum Annex while we ladies had tea with Mrs. Smith. I shall never fail to be impressed with Mrs. Smith's hospitality, graciousness, elegance, and cultivation. You recall Darcy's definition of a woman of accomplishment - the cultivation and improvement of her mind by extensive reading? Mrs. Smith exemplifies this to a nicety. The spread laid before us recalled to mind the glory and splendour of book tea, dearly cherished and keenly missed. It's amazing how filling trifles and tidbits can add up to be. On Sunday we went to church and got to see so many dear familiar faces. The time was far too short and I wish we could have lingered longer. However, we had a pleasant afternoon of eating popcorn and playing Scotland Yard. Michael was introduced to this game two years ago, during the first Thanksgiving he spent with my family, and made so bold as to play Mr. X this time. He did quite well, attaining the bottom of the second column before capture, despite being dealt an inconveniently located starting tile. Benjamin also took a turn at villainy, evading us for an impressive length of time. His final demise lay in failing to notice that a bus line ran between two critical points. Well, the web was tightening, anyway.

Our flight left at 8:05 from Reagan. Not sure of what to expect in terms of crowds, we left in plenty of time. It turned out to be a breeze. The airport was dead and security a veritable walk-through. We reached our gate well in time, and then Michael had the happy thought to wander over to another gate where the 7:05 flight to Atlanta was boarding, and ask whether we could fly stand-by on that one. Genius! Amazingly enough, they had room, and we arrived home an hour ahead of schedule, with no rush or frenzy and no wasted time on the front end. It was much the pleasantest flight in recent memory, in terms of ease of boarding, comfort level of the plane (cosy to my thinking, stuffy to Michael's), selection of beverages (whole milk!), brevity of flight time, and deliciousness of airport food. Despite saving an hour, though, it was still far too late when we got home and brutally early this morning. Yawn. Well worth the weekend, though.

Gratitude

On Monday we went to the doctor for my monthly checkup. We had so much other stuff to take care of (dental appointments, courthouse stops, etc.) that had to be done during business hours that we both took off the whole day to knock it all out at once. The benefit was that Michael was able to see the sonogram too. It was truly an amazing experience. Even more so than the first time, Baby is now very distinctly human. The technician was on a mission to get all the shots she needed, so she kept stopping at shots and typing in ‘Stom’ or ‘Blad’ with little arrows pointing to the pertinent parts. In between the freeze frames, while she was vying for the right angle, we got to watch live time images of our baby kicking, curling its fingertips, and pursing its lips. It was amazing to watch all the activity going on and to admit, ‘I can’t feel a thing.’ ‘Shouldn’t I be feeling that?’ I yelped, as Baby took a big swing upwards and kicked away with both feet. ‘How oblivious could I be?’ Apparently Baby is not very strong yet, and the environment is so cushioned and weightless that the impact is minimal.

Life is full of ups and downs, of course. I try not to wait until Thanksgiving each year to count my blessings, but endeavor to cultivate a spirit of gratitude and contentment whenever I’m tempted to do a little wistful gazing down the road. Sometimes it’s easier than at other times to maintain a level perspective, or what I call ‘a good dose of Pippin-style unquenchable cheerfulness.’ (‘There is a crumb of comfort in all this, at least, and perhaps more than a crumb: now we can sit down to breakfast.’ This after the Black Riders ravage their rooms and set loose all their ponies and spoil the start of their secret journey. Why can’t I always look on the bright side of things like that?)

So I’m grateful for the adventure that lies before us. We knew that having a baby would change our lives, but it’s impossible to grasp the full impact – it still keeps dawning on us in little ways, like when we were setting our next dental appointments for six months from now, and at first we went for the same time slot: just like on Monday, if we have simultaneous appointments, then we can drive together, save time, and be more efficient. Until I remembered, ‘Oh, wait, we’ll have the baby then…we’d better stagger our appointments, so we can take turns with the baby.’ That’s a consideration we haven’t had to make heretofore! And yet, though we could choose to see this as an impingement on our liberty, I am finding it an exciting and incredible chance for adventure – this is uncharted territory! All those years when I was pretty generally happy, content, perhaps occasionally complacent, even bored, what I most feared was falling into a rut. Now change is inevitable, and that makes Life very interesting.

I can’t help cataloguing all the specific things to be thankful for this year – good jobs, nice house, healthy baby, satisfying election results – and yet these are all part and parcel of the big picture, which is simply to acknowledge that God is sovereign. If it were a rotten year, if times were tough, wouldn’t it still be incumbent upon us to give thanks in all things? So not only do we have the underlying assurance and comfort of His blessing, come what may, but we also happen to have the temporal and very gratifying blessing of happiness in our present circumstances. And that’s just icing on the cake.

A blessed Thanksgiving to one and all!

Of strawberries and cream

Several days ago Baby decided that we desperately needed some fresh strawberries. Baby has rather limited capability in this regard, so I was commissioned to carry out the venture. There followed a long, epic-like strawberry quest, which rivaled the strawberry caper conducted by the Roman centurion in Asterix the Gaul. Fortunately I was able to identify the exact context in which the strawberries were required: fresh, ripe, sweet, and ground up into a milkshake. On Saturday I spotted a lovely picture of a strawberry shake at the Atlanta Bread Company. We were on the right track. But no strawberry-flavoured drink would do: we had to make our own, from fresh, ripe, sweet strawberries. Michael was very impressed at how refined Baby's tastes were, and offered to run to the grocery store and pick up a carton of strawberries. This wouldn't do, however, as grocery store strawberries are notoriously expensive and unripe. We decided to hold out until Monday, when we would be going by the farmer's market in hopes that fresh, ripe, sweet strawberries could be found.

Yesterday was a day unto itself, but the upshot of it was that there were no fresh, ripe, sweet strawberries to be found, not even for ready money. This was a crushing blow indeed. As a final resort, we stopped by the grocery store to look and found pitiful, pathetic little flats of unripe, greenish, sickly-looking strawberries for the iniquitous price of $4.99 per carton. Baby wasn't very impressed, and I wearily concurred. The quest ended in failure, arduous and fruitless.

Upon returning home, Baby decided that the idea of a milkshake was a sound one, despite there being no strawberries, so we decided on a chocolate-peanut butter shake as consolation prize. No recipe exists for this shake, but we knew what to do by instinct: we poured milk, cocoa powder, powdered sugar, peanut butter, and leftover vanilla ice cream into the blender, and ended up with a really smooth, delicious, chocolatey-peanut buttery milkshake that almost made up for the lack of strawberries. Almost. In the process we spattered the counter and cupboards with chocolate spray (Duh! That's why the side of the blender is clear, so you can see the progress without opening the lid!), burned the 7-layer bars we were baking for my office Thanksgiving party tomorrow (Moral: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush = a dessert in the oven is worth two in the blender - never neglect the one in your excitement over the other), and broke the ice cream scoop in our eagerness - back to using the melon-baller we used when we first got married. We retired from the field of battle victorious but weary. Oh, well. It's a short work-week, and there will be good food aplenty on Thursday.

Posted on our vending machine

Typed up nicely: Out of order, sorry.
Scrawled underneath: That's okay.
Scribbled underneath that: No it's not.

Largess

I've discovered a new line of graft: simple, highly effective, seemingly endless potential for returns. I've decided to share my success story only upon the reflection that the majority of my readership are (is? are? Arrgh!) not local and thus in no danger of cutting in on my market. The scheme is this: Get pregnant, and wait for the returns to come rolling in.

Suddenly people are flooding me with attention, food, services, and, most importantly, clothes. At least once a week someone offers to stand me lunch, and hardly a day goes by that someone doesn't offer to bring me something from the snack machine. Or they're sharing their bag of chips. Or making sure I have enough to drink, or eat, and of the right nutritional composition. Most amazingly, though, is the clothes situation. Somewhat put off by the steep prices - albeit cute styles - of maternity clothes that day we went shopping a few weeks ago, I fell into a brown study on the topic of my maternity wardrobe, contemplating with almost wistful regret (O me of little faith!) the thought that, if we were living in Virginia, no doubt the stones themselves would rise up and flood me with maternity clothes - but alas, starting off in a new community, with friends of the right size mostly in a stage of life not to be getting rid of maternity clothes...well, it was too bad, but there you had it. And yet, this past month has positively been a meteorogical study in the phenomenon of the opening of the windows of Heaven, as several ladies from work have brought in assorted collections of pants, sweaters, and dresses that more or less work, and should work for at least the next three months. It's like Christmas every day!

Pictures forthcoming

This is to assure Sarah that we do have pictures to post. They are saved on our computer at home, and we even spent a few minutes last night trying to figure out how to put them on the blog. We signed up for something called Picasa, which promised to make emailing and posting pictures easy, but after three disillusioning minutes of following directions, wearily clicking on Yes after Yes, only to have no pictures magically appear on the blog, we gave up and decided it was time for bed anyway. If some kind soul who has managed the trick would like to post a comment with instructions for simpletons, it would be much appreciated. Ideally there should be a post with a link to click on to open a photo gallery, as opposed to pictures splat on the blog homepage, which might make things too slow for those with slow computers.

Quid? Quid?

A great shout of rejoicing ought to be going up throughout the land, because for the first time in a generation – perhaps the first time ever – the Asterix books are being re-printed in America. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get Asterix books in the States? Most of my collection comes from England or Canada, procured through E-bay or Amazon. Now Orion Paperbacks is rising to the occasion and printing the whole series, the English translation, at a very affordable price. This is the original series all right, with a few minor typographical changes, the most lamentable being the lack of diversity in the type (in the original English manuscripts, the Goths speak in Gothic script, the Norwegians speak in Norse script, and so on. Obliterating this twist removes a small but funny joke from the series).

Asterix can readily be described as high-class comic books, highbrow humour in a classic form. Each time I read through one of these books I discover something fresh to laugh at and am amazed anew at the profundity and wit, not only of the authors, but of the translators, who managed to pull off the most brilliant puns and classical allusions from the original Italian.

What I would really like to see, someday, is a complete annotated and footnoted Asterix collection, to explain to me things like the following:

In 'Asterix the Legionary' the pirates' ship is sunk by Asterix and Obelix (again). The image of the pirates on a raft in mid-ocean is derived from a 19th Century French Romantic painting, now in the Louvre, 'The Raft of the Medusa' by Géricault. In the French version the pirate captain says to the reader 'Je suis médusé' ('I'm stunned'). In English this is rendered equally cleverly as 'We've been framed, by Jericho.'

Even if these details escape one at first (or seventh) reading, surely the most unclassified mind can appreciate such lines as ‘This is a bitter pilum to take, by Jupiter’ (from a legionary about to get speared) or laugh at an Egyptian named Ptennisnet. If you haven’t yet had the pleasure of perusing an Asterix book, I offer you the advice of Scrooge re: the prize turkey: ‘Go and buy it, my boy.’

Brrr!

Frost is on the grass every morning now, and today there was mist on my way to work. Yesterday I wore sandals, and my toes froze. I knew it was a foolish notion, but I had just painted my toenails; 'And what,' said Lasaraleen, 'is the good of a new dress if no one's going to see it?'

The nice thing about the second trimester is that I'm not really into maternity clothes yet - next size up, normal clothes, works fine on most things, especially with low-rise pants and skirts. Yesterday Becky brought me a whole bag of pants she no longer wore, and it felt like Christmas as I dumped them out across the bed. Michael stood by and offered commentary - 'No good - those don't have any belt loops. How do you expect them to stay up?' This in reference to an ongoing conversation we have about belts, begun in an IM chat once when I remarked, 'Weirdness. Can you imagine pants not staying up without a belt?' I contend that belts are a mere accessory, nothing more than an ornamental flourish, while Michael thinks they actually hold pants up. One morning, soon after we were married, I told him, 'You know, girls don't put on their pants that wasteful way, one leg at a time. We jump into them both feet at once! Twice as fast!' I haven't managed to convince him of this yet, however.

A merry heart

1 Chronicles chapter 4 is a really funny chapter. In fact, it's absolutely hysterical if you read it late at night in a silly mood. This we discovered last night as we read our daily Bible chapter together. It started off in verse 3 with the most priceless name I can recall in recent history: Hazelelponi. Michael pronounced this as 'Has-a-lil'-pony,' and we both erupted into laughter. Throughout the rest of the chapter one of us would suddenly think of the name, and start laughing again until the tears came to our eyes. Then there was Coz. Inspired by our spoiled little rich girl whose daddy bought her a pony, I giggled, 'Why did his mother name him that? Just Coz!' Ha ha ha! Er, of course, we had already met in Genesis, but I had never noticed before how stammery his name sounded. Next we met 'Just jokin' Jokim, who lived 'among plants and hedges' (toadstools maybe?) Ah, me, and I thought 1 Chronicles 4 was all about Jabez.

Parents’ rights – but which parents?

Recently I’ve been considering an overhaul of our country’s adoption laws. I admit I’m not terribly familiar with the details of the laws. But I know of at least one state where, up to six months after the adoption transaction is completed, the birth mother can change her mind and demand the baby back.

Now, I know this is a terribly sensitive issue. We should all want what’s best for the child, and a rational viewpoint demands the assumption that individuals (read: the child’s parents) can make this decision far better than the State. If a child’s biological parents decide to keep their child, isn’t that their decision, regardless of whether we feel the child will be better off elsewhere?

I’m all for parents’ rights. And I certainly applaud those mothers who choose to keep their children. My concern is for the prospective adoptive parents who go through the agony and the ecstasy of believing that they were finally blessed with a child, only to have the baby torn from them, even after they have taken him home.

It seems that in an effort to protect the interests of the biological parents, the State (using the term generically, since I’m still not sure if it’s mostly federal or state legislation) has erred on the side of doing wrong to adoptive parents. Why do we feel compelled to install such a failsafe plan in our adoption process as to enable someone to change his mind after the fact and back out of a contractual agreement? Is it based on our society’s fascination with no-risk, money-back guarantees, the notion that if you change your mind, you can still get what you want, at whatever cost to the other party? It seems that those considering adoption should be warned, as are those contemplating marriage, that this is a serious decision, not to be made lightly but soberly and reverently; and that, once the die is cast, they are left with the consequences.

Tempus fugit

Last Christmas Michael's 12-year-old nephew Jacob gave us a can of ant & roach spray. According to the package, it 'Kills up to two weeks.' This is a very useful function for, say, Eric, who, due to his Iraq tour last year, has accumulated far more vacation time than he is likely to need and which he needs to use up by the end of the year. He was even planning a visit to see us in an effort to use up some of this time. Michael offered to send him the can of spray if he needed to kill any more time - guaranteed to kill up to two weeks - but Eric didn't seem to think it would help. Meanwhile Stephanie is coming to town tonight to pick up her stuff, now that she has her own apartment. It's been nice storing her bedroom set all these months, but this is good as it will enable us to get the room ready for Baby. It's nice how it all works out.

Not long now until Thanksgiving!

Sailing by ash breeze

Michael and I have now finished reading Johnny Tremain. It was a very good book. (Upon breaking his arm, Joseph had nothing to do but sit around and read books, so he read it too. It made for interesting conversation when I'd call every night to see how he was doing.) We have now begun to read Carry On, Mr. Bowditch. It's a children's book, but a great one, simply written and well narrated. It's full of interesting concepts and ideas - being becalmed at the chandlery, losing your anchor to windward - and provides some amazing insights into the development of navigation and 'scientific sailing.'

Either I'm coming down with a bad cold again or I'm reacting to the air from the vents now that we've turned the house on its winter head mode. It's gotten to the point where, whenever I sneeze, Michael will just say, 'Yeah, yeah, you just want more attention.'

It happens that I will drop the occasional cynical remark about Institute. This does not stem from malice aforethought but simply happens because the observation was begging to be made. Michael is pretty tolerant of my perspective, though, not having gone through that gauntlet himself, he doesn't always appreciate the finer points of my wit. Recently I made some reference to my theory on the Institute's subtle agenda for the discouragement of the higher education of women on grounds of eligibility. 'Madam, you go too far!' he said to me. 'Oh, come on,' I protested. 'You have to see the funny side of laughing at an establishment so full of customs and rituals that they even teach you the proper way to raise your hand!' And demonstrated it forthwith. That got his attention. 'You have got to be kidding! No one could be that obsessive!' It took a lot of convincing to persuade him that I wasn't making it up.

On the design defects inherent in capes

Sunday night our church had a special evening service at the end of our missions emphasis week. Heather Mercer (missionary to Afghanistan captured by the Taliban) gave her testimony, and then we had an international food bazaar to honour our missionaries. Marcela was very excited about doing a table for Costa Rica, and spent all day Saturday baking in preparation. She enlisted Amanda and me to help serve, and so we slipped out of the service early and served tamales, pineapple empanadas, and papaya picadillo. Very yummy food! Michael, meanwhile, browsed the bazaar and brought me back baklava, pita, and feta cheese, German chocolate cheesecake and sausage, Jamaican jerk chicken, and indian rice and garbanzo beans. So I got the best of both worlds: the satisfaction of helping out combined with the opportunity not to miss out on a thing! Husbands make such wonderful butlers.

Last night we went downtown to meet some friends for dinner and a movie: The Incredibles. If I still lived in Virginia, I'm sure I would have gotten a full review from the Hall kids. As we sat down, Amanda groaned, 'Oh, no! Who put Ron in the middle?' He kept up an entertaining commentary through the previews, but no comment was necessary for the duration of the movie: we were all laughing hard enough already. Quite the evening of jollification and merriment.

Happy days

We’re still basking in an aureate post-election glow. It seems that nothing can go wrong. Winter weather is here, the thermostat is set to a toasty temp, and we may have to build a fire in the fireplace soon.

On Saturday we had absolutely nothing planned, and so for the first time in many weeks we had a big breakfast of French toast and bacon and eggs. I mixed up the egg and milk batter and dipped the first slice of bread in before realizing that I wanted to fry the bacon first so I could decide if I wanted to fry the French toast in the drippings. Hastily I got out the skillet and merrily fried the bacon. This would have gone more quickly if the bacon hadn’t been frozen solid (next time I will plan ahead better, quotha). By the time I was ready to fry the French toast, I discovered that the egg and milk mixture had disappeared! I had used four eggs this time, and they were all gone. The piece of bread, meanwhile, looked somewhat waterlogged but nothing out of the ordinary. I whipped up more egg and milk and fried up the French toast.

By the time it was done, the first slice was noticeably bulkier than the others. It looked like it was on steroids and tasted rather like quiche. It was funny and would be a great practical joke to play on someone if all slices served were uniformly swollen: without the wimpy-looking slices for comparison, it looked almost normal.

Our young married class is doing a series entitled Marriage on the Rock, about communication. This Sunday our teacher was talking about different avenues for good communication, including I Feel Lists, The Conference, and Word Pictures. Instantly my mind was filled with word pictures, which I started scribbling on my notes for Michael. Most of them are a bit hard to convey in straight text, but examples would be gegs (scrambled eggs) or RETUrns (diminishing returns). Then it turned out that the teacher was really talking about Analogies (‘When you don’t fix the dishwasher when I ask, it makes me feel like we’re not on the same team’) instead of Word Pictures. Oh, well.

Boys will be boys

Apparently my younger brother Joseph fell out of a tree last week and broke his arm. (Actually, I found out last night that it was in fact a honeysuckle bush.) I've been calling him nearly every night to see how he is doing and to keep his spirits up. The first few days were pretty painful for him, and he was on a lot of ibuprofin. When I would call, this was reflected in his conversation - or maybe not.

There's a scene from one of the Asterix books when Getafix is on the way to the Druid convention when he is stopped by a cohort of Roman legionaries, challenging the group because there have been Goths sighted in the area. To prove that he is a Gaulish druid, and not a Goth, Getafix performs some of his magic: he gives a bunch of herbs to one of the legionaries to eat, at which the legionary can only say 'Hee-haw!' The cohort marches off, with the legionary braying every so often, while the commander remarks, 'Funny, it doesn't seem to have made that much of a difference...'

That was exactly how I felt after my conversations with Joseph. 'As you can see, he's really doped up on ibuprofin...funny, it doesn't seem to make that much of a difference...' I told him that Michael was taking my car in to get my tires rotated. Pause. 'Oh.' Faraway voice. 'Doesn't that happen when you drive?'

Hip hip hurrah!

Let's give three cheers and one cheer more for the winner in 2004!

Masterfully done. The perfect finishing touch to give Kerry respectful space to bow out gracefully. All is most happily concluded.

Victory is sweet.

What news from the north, Riders of Rohan?

Michael and I both voted early this morning, and stood in long lines to do so. Maybe it wasn't just all hype about early electioning and prognostications of overloaded polls.

Just saw a clip of Kerry saying something like 'It is time to take America to a new and safer place.' Ooh, like someplace where the terrorists won't find us? Someplace safer than North America? Why didn't George Bush think of that one?

Fall back

Always before, my rest and relaxation quotient has gotten such a boost from the reversion to Standard Time. But this time it seemed that the extra hour was no help at all. Instead, my flagging constitution simply absorbed it. My body woke up this morning and said, ‘Okay, that was nice. Need more sleep.’

We went out to catch a matinee on Saturday. Alas, we pressed our luck too long and The Village is no longer playing, even at the cheap theater. So we went to see The Bourne Identity instead, and fortunately got there in time for the previews. I am such a sucker for previews. I don’t feel as if I’m getting my money’s worth out of a movie if I don’t get a sufficient sampling of the other movies out there while I’m at it. When we rent a movie and there are no previews, I feel so ripped off. But there was one preview that is still bothering me. Well, first of all, I thought it said at the beginning that it had been approved for ALL audiences, so I wasn’t even in the mindset of closing my eyes until toward the end, when Michael leaned over and whispered, ‘You know, you can close your eyes.’ But I had still seen enough to puzzle me. I kept saying things later like, ‘Now, wait a minute. There were the zombies, and then there were the gargoyles that came alive, and then there was that creepy alien-like tentacle. How could a bio-chemical experiment gone awry give normal humans all of those properties?’ ‘Rose,’ Michael would say patiently, ‘it’s just a B-grade horror flick. I’m sure it doesn’t have a reasonable plot and it’s not supposed to make sense.’ ‘Oh.’ And then, a little later, ‘Why didn’t the man with the gun notice that alien tentacle curling around him? Don’t you think you’d notice something like that? And if you had a gun in your hand, wouldn’t you shoot it?’ ‘Rose! It’s just a movie! He stood there stupidly because he was scripted to do that!’ ‘Oh, that’s right.’ And then, later, ‘Hmm, well, since it said at the beginning that they sealed the vault, then all the action takes place in the sealed vault, so it’s a contained disaster, so the subtitle is really inaccurate right? I mean, apocalypse means total destruction of the whole world, not just a localised disaster.’ It was a very puzzling preview. Somewhat less puzzling in plot, but just as mysterious in premise, was the snake movie. Supposedly a team of explorers braved the wilds of the jungle and the wrath of mating anacondas in search of the Blood Orchid, a rare flower that was supposed to have healing, fountain-of-youth properties. ‘But,’ I told Michael, ‘why go off into a dangerous jungle for that? Why not just breed it from the comforts of the laboratory, as they did with the black tulip, or the blue tea rose?’

Much more satisfying is A & E’s Pride and Prejudice, which we are watching together for the third time. Once again, it was at Michael’s instigation. He remarked on Friday night, ‘I think it’s time to watch Pride and Prejudice again.’ With my current sleep requirements, we only get in one episode per night, but it’s such a good movie! When the ominous music played as Mr. Darcy rides through the woods - and you just know he’s going to come face-to-face with Elizabeth any minute - I patted Michael’s hand and said, ‘See, this is the kind of scary music I like! This is exactly my level of tension!’

Listmania

Michael is an Organised List Person. He writes lists to help himself concentrate, to help remember things, to keep things straight, to make sure he’s not leaving anything out. Consequently his life is very organised and he rarely forgets things.

When he was about nine, he wanted to read several series of his favourite books at once. But he wanted to make sure that he did it decently and in good order. So he typed up a list dividing all the reading up into appropriate segments, in methodical sequence. He still has the list, and showed it to me once after we were married. It is about four pages long, and is a masterful integration of The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, the Wizard of Oz books, and the Sugar Creek Gang series. There are about two hundred line items, beginning with The Silmarillion pp. 1-(I forget, but it was the logical dividing line in the story), then going to the first Sugar Creek Gang book, next taking so many chapters of The Magician’s Nephew, then The Wizard of Oz, etc. He even stopped short a few pages shy of the end of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe and put The Horse and His Boy next on the list in the next Narnia slot, because, chronologically, that is how it happened.

I am a Random List Person. I will notice something, and later, I will notice something similar, and think, ‘I detect a pattern here – how many more instances of x can I find?’ Sometimes I’ll actually write them down, but more often I’ll think of two or three, decide I have a pattern, intend to write it down, and forget about it until I notice another instance of the same phenomenon. Then I’ll think, ‘Wow, yet another instance of x! Wait – what were the first two?’

My lists are rarely useful lists, like shopping lists or to-do lists. Instead they are interesting lists. My most comprehensive list (so thorough only because I started writing it down, several years ago) has about ten items on it and is unofficially titled ‘Inevitable Adjective/Noun Combinations.’ I haven’t been able to find the list for quite some time, but right off the top of my head, I can remember that it included:

Impenetrable fog
Sickening thud
Wry chagrin
Frightful rate

Recently it occurred to me to collect Clever Sayings Whereby You Use The Wrong Word For Comic Effect, as in:

You poor depraved child
I resemble that remark very strongly
The meal was expansive (that is not my southern accent attempting to describe the price)

Then I also like to find Consonant Sequences That Make Words No Matter What Vowel You Put In, as in:

Bg (bag, beg, big, bog, bug)
Mss (mass, mess, miss, moss, muss)
Lst (last, lest, list, lost, lust)

I thought of the beginnings of another List a couple of days ago, only I can't remember the category anymore. What a pity. It was a very interesting phenomenon and I wanted to discover more. As soon as I think of it, I will write it down, lest it be lost like the last list.

Lunacy

It was cloudy last night, and thus I missed the total lunar eclipse. This is cruelly ironic because, since we were driving back from Bible study, I was actually awake at the time. Last lunar eclipse, it was cloudy in Virginia, where I was at the time. Michael, in Georgia, got to see it fine. He described it to me over the phone. I hear my family back in Virginia got a fine view last night. Just have to be in the right place at the right time, I guess.

Do you know how you can tell whether the moon is waxing or waning? I have a very fun mnemonic for the purpose. It's so handy to be able to rattle off glibly, 'Waxing gibbous,' or 'Waning crescent,' or 'Waxing first quarter.'

All Hallow’s Eve

Ghosts and witches clutter the landscape, and I am confronted once again with the dilemma of What To Think about Halloween. Only this year, for about the first time, there is no easy cop-out.

We never celebrated Halloween when I was growing up, and the extent of the holiday consisted of all the post-Halloween candy we got on sale. I learned at an early age about the pagan origins of the date, and always accepted the fact that, because of its religious significance and strong association with satanic rituals, it was not an appropriate holiday for Christians to celebrate. Sometimes we’d participate in church-sponsored ‘harvest parties,’ but only if they were careful not to label themselves ‘Halloween alternatives’ and didn’t involve dressing up, because offering a mere alternative to evil was a form of imitation and showed a spirit of discontentment with not following the crowd. I was taught that it was a form of hypocrisy (straining at a gnat) to draw such fine lines as dressing up as long as you’re careful not to dress up as anything wicked (ghost, goblin, etc.) – after all, the whole point of dressing up was in remembrance of the disguises donned by druids.

I never regretted missing the whole trick-or-treat experience, and I never felt deprived or left out because everyone else got candy. So what? I got tons more candy the day after, and it was all good stuff, because my mom would buy it for us all!

There were glitches in the system, of course. I remember once, when I was probably six or seven, being asked by a friendly man in the elevator whether I was ready for the Great Jack-O-Lantern to come down that night and bring me candy, and replying very seriously that we didn’t believe in jack-o-lanterns. Hence a talk on the need for discretion and tact on the topic of Halloween, as on all other topics, and an admonition that it was not necessary to make other people feel bad about celebrating Halloween, especially since so many Christians did, as well.

Now we’re confronting the question of whether we’ll let our kids celebrate Halloween or not. I hadn’t ever given this issue much thought, since I’ve decided that, regardless of the validity of my parents’ concerns, it was certainly no hardship on me to miss out. I’ve tended to regard this as a kind of meat-offered-to-idols issue: it may not be actually wrong, but it certainly offends many people, and it doesn’t hurt to abstain.

However. Michael has very happy memories of going trick-or-treating as a kid, and remembers with fondness the whole excitement of dressing up, prospecting for candy, and sorting out the good stuff from the mediocre stuff. He went into raptures reminiscing about the whole experiences – ‘And there were always those little old ladies who’d make popcorn bars, and of course the neighborhood dentist would pass out toothbrushes instead of candy, and sometimes you’d score big and get a whole candy bar…’ He never picked up on any heathen overtones while trick-or-treating. Besides, he pointed out, Easter was originally a pagan holiday – yet I have no qualms about celebrating that. Christmas in December was originally a pagan holiday – yet we celebrate that. I countered by pointing out that these both were adopted by Christians for specific Christian events, and were thus completely transformed – we have nothing to celebrate about Halloween, and any attempt to ‘claim’ it now would just come across as a weak attempt to offer some lame alternative. Anyway, I told him, do we really want to teach our kids to panhandle candy from innocent homeowners? What kind of values system is that??

Regardless of the pagan origins of the day, it arguably has no religious significance now. I grant that. No one thinks of Satan worship when they send their little kiddies into the world to accumulate candy. So what should our attitude toward it be? I just don’t know. I haven’t done enough research into the pagan history of the day to know to what extent paganism permeates the holiday, and I don’t have enough information to decide how much that should affect our response to it anyway. And the next Halloween is staring me in the face, and I have no intention of going out and wasting money on candy just to hand it out to greedy little tykes who will promptly get cavities from it.

So, my friends, I pose the question to you. Did you grow up trick-or-treating? And do you plan to let your kids do it? Why or why not?

Cheers to the new cooking blog!

Check it out at www.letsdolunch.blogspot.com

Recently my car turned over 69,000 miles. 'Great news!' I told Michael that evening, by way of announcing the need for the next oil change. 'I still have more money than miles on my car...in pennies, at least.'

Halfy birthday to me

I forgot to notice that yesterday was my half-birthday. Funny, I never used to miss these milestones when I was younger.

Oh, I also forgot to give a movie review of Spiderman 2. Here it is. The best parts of the whole movie were the excerpts from The Importance of Being Earnest. The irony of the whole thing is that by repeatedly muffing her lines on-stage, Kirsten Dunst proves once again that she can't act, just look pretty. Lamest line of the whole movie - kid on the train: 'We won't tell nobody.'

Less than a month to Thanksgiving. Less than two months to Christmas. And we have yet to purchase plane tickets for either holiday. Yikes. We're not actually panicking yet re: the Christmas trip, but we're getting very nervous about Thanksgiving.

Nietzsche is dead

But he said some very profound things, most of which I disagree with but which sound very grand, like 'Equality is the means by which the masses crush human greatness.' I need a similarly grand quote about pregnancy, about how it crushes the human greatness, at least in the area of stamina and appetite.

In an effort to make up some time I'll be taking off over Thanksgiving and Christmas (Colonial Lighting is a great place to work in terms of work environment, colleagues, and so on, but no place in the world has HSLDA's benefits), I came in this Saturday for a half-day of work. And the work I do is not hard work, right? It's pretty easy to sit in a chair in front of a computer for four hours. But it absolutely exhausted me! Getting up 'early' instead of sleeping in wiped me out for the weekend. Upon coming home I staggered off to the cheap theater with Michael to watch The Village, only by the time Baby decided where we wanted to stop for lunch, we had missed the beginning, and you just can't go to a creepy movie like that without seeing the first five minutes, so we ended up going to Spiderman 2 instead. (You may notice that these movies came out quite some time ago. That is how we get to watch them for $0.99 each. At two admissions, that's even cheaper than renting.) After that was done we were just ten minutes too late for the next showing of The Village, so I still don't know what happens. Ah, well, next week. But on the over-achievement front, I decided to throw in the towel. My former self would have risen to the occasion gladly, but my current self simply can't keep up the pace - so no more working on Saturdays. I came home from the movie and slept for the rest of the day. The only good thing about going in to work was that I Told people at work, and that was a great success. Everyone was excited and congratulatory, and it was surprisingly affirming and complimentary to be told repeatedly that they never would have guessed. (Perhaps the Baby Bulge is more noticeable to me than to the rest of the world.)

Yesterday was more satisfying, although no more soporific. We invited Mitch and Amy over for dinner, a couple in our young marrieds class that we're on smiling acquaintance with but whose friendship we've decided we really ought to cultivate. They live practically across the street from us (next subdivision down) and have a 19-month old baby, and just found out they're expecting their second. So definitely a step out of our current young-married-without-kids demographic that most of our friends down here fit into. For the last several weeks we've decided that we need to get to know them better, but I've been too tired to really plan any hospitable overtures. So we decided on the spontaneous and impulsive: in Sunday School we just asked them if they'd like to come over for dinner. And really, it was fun! They're delightful people, as we suspected, and we had a great time talking about backgrounds, how we met, church, kids, and homeschooling (which they're planning on). They lived in Oregon for five years and knew all about Tillamook Brown Cow ice cream. Amy and I were able to commiserate over not being able to eat a delicious dessert, much as we wanted to. And we agreed to come over to their place for dinner soon, so they could put Alex to bed early and play board games with us.

But oh, I'm tired today. And have no ambitions for the rest of the week, except to sleep in next Saturday.

Some manner of comedy

Kate & Leopold has been out long enough that probably everyone who wants to see it has seen it already. Just in case, the following commentary may give away the plot, if you couldn’t guess it already from the previews. Last night it was playing on TV, and since I’d had a mild desire to see it ever since it came out, we stayed up and watched it. Well, it was free, anyway.

Perhaps the best thing I can say about the movie was that it fell far short. It began with bright hopes, and I enjoyed the period costumes and witty repartee (‘You light up a room simply by leaving it’) as well as the promise of a clever plot twist involving the time travel paradox. There was real potential for a resounding moral about the need for true gentlemen to defend the honour of all ladies, distressed damsels or not, innocent or otherwise, against the machinations of unscrupulous villains. But in the end, this positive message was lost in the fray and the moral degenerated into your typical follow-your-heart romantic comedy theme. I did enjoy observing how a gentleman simply behaving like a gentleman tends to show up the shallow shortcomings of your typical modern male, and how the little matters of common courtesy which Leopold took for granted – speaking respectfully, standing when a lady left the table – made such an impression on women. This theme – women like to be treated like ladies and generally prefer to be courted and wooed rather than taken for granted – could have been explored a bit more.

Ah, well. It was ‘pleasant piffle,’ and I liked Meg Ryan’s wardrobe of spiffy suits, even if Michael thought her hair untidy and messy. ‘Well, it’s supposed to be tousled and adorable,’ I told him. ‘Adorable only if you like the Raggedy Ann look,’ was his reply.

You can say that again

Yet another wonderful thing about marriage is the mutual immunity and confidentiality clause. So I term the 1 Corinthians 13 method of 'bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things.' In other words, it's our sworn duty to think the best of each other and take everything the other says in the best possible light. So we can get away with saying so much more to each other than we would ever consider with the rest of the world.

Last night we were discussing something and the matter of a mutual acquaintance came up. Michael said, 'Well, I don't know what she thinks about that topic because I've never had a really serious conversation with her.' 'Has anyone?' I said, and then clapped my hand over my mouth to indicate that I couldn't be-LIEVE I had said it and had no malicious intent whatsoever. It was just begging to be said.

Sox on Fox

I went to sleep last night after the first inning. (We ate supper in front of the TV while we watched the first game, the Astros v. the Cardinals, and Michael was actually cheering the Astros, even though they beat the Braves not one month ago.) But there seemed no point to staying up for the second game. I even told Michael, ‘You KNOW the Yankees are going to win! They ALWAYS win! And why is it always the Yankees v. the Red Sox? Why don’t they ever play any other teams besides each other?’ ‘Of course they play other teams, silly!’ Michael laughed, and proceeded to list several ‘famous’ games wherein they faced other opponents besides each other. But aside from last year’s World series (Yankees v. Marlins), which I actually watched on TV, I had never heard of any such matches. With no roots in either state, I had no personal interest in which team won, although I had sympathy for the Red Sox, but I figured it was a foregone conclusion. I was therefore very much surprised to find out, post hoc, that the Red Sox had pulled it off after all. Although this is apparently not such an earth-shattering thing as I thought it was last night, when I assumed that all the ‘1918’ signs meant that the Sox had not been to a World Series since that time, when in fact it was the last time they won.

More about that wonderful weekend…

Saturday was such a perfect day that I just can’t stop talking about it. So, to resume the narrative…

After a perfect morning of bargains (2-for-1 lipstick and a free haircut) we had lunch at Atlanta Bread Company, where I used a coupon for a free bowl of soup with sandwich. I had never eaten there before, and their sandwiches were delicious! Plus it was sunny out, and I couldn’t help tossing my newly-short hair over my shoulders. Then we went shopping for maternity clothes, and that was a real eye-opener. It was just a scoping trip – we didn’t actually buy anything, but we got a lot of ideas, which to my mind made it a success. (Michael expressed amazement at this. ‘How can you be happy? We set out to buy maternity clothes; we came back without any; ergo, we failed.’) It was incredible to pick out a few really cute-looking outfits and try them on. In the dressing rooms, they had those little six-month pillows, and trying that on with the clothes was astounding, to say the least. (I heartily recommend this to all my married friends who are not expecting yet. This is a very poignant and surprising exercise to bring home, as nothing else can, the reality of what to expect.) Just as seeing the little fuzzy sonogram of our baby brought home the reality of this adventure like nothing else, so putting an actual picture of what I’m going to look like 5-6 months hence opened our eyes anew to the seriousness of this and, oh, I don’t know – as Bertie says, just plain thing-ness.

While we were walking through the mall we passed a confectionary and watched with interest the confectioner pour out scoops of praline onto a solid slab of marble. It looked delicious and terribly expensive. A few steps further brought us to the other side of the store, where there were free samples of that very confection. Delectable! It was your basic penuche candy (brown sugar and butter simmered together to soft-ball stage, cooled and infused with powdered sugar) with pecans in it, and simply marvelous. The samples were terribly generous, too – more than just tantalising-size. How could the day get any better? Yet it did.

We dashed home, wrapped our gift, and went down to Ken and Anne’s wedding. All our friends were there. Everyone noticed my haircut. Michael pretended to be miffed at first that no one commented on his. (I cut his very short that morning.) He even predicted on the way down: ‘You just watch. Amanda is going to come up to you, put her hand on your shoulder, and exclaim, “Oh, Rose, it looks so cute!” But is Benjamin going to do the same for me? Nooo.’ When Laura commented that she is going to donate her hair to Locks of Love, too, as soon as it is long enough, Michael put in, ‘Yes, I offered mine, but apparently they mean each hair has to be 10 inches long. Come on! I mean, if you lay it end to end…’

The ceremony was simple and unorthodox (the groomsmen came out from behind a black curtain wearing sunglasses while rock music played; Ken’s alma mater song ‘The Victors’ played for the recessional; and there was no live music: DJ Ron Garner played all songs off his laptop) and the food was prompt and delicious. While we guests filed out to the receiving line, the rest of the wedding party (sans bride and groom) quickly rearranged the chairs and pulled out the tables. The lights in the hall dimmed, and we danced the night away amidst white Christmas lights and flickering candles. It was fabulous beyond words.

Haircuts and history

The last time I chopped off my hair so dramatically was just over two years ago, in the fall of 2002. It had gotten to my waist, and Catherine even complimented me on it when I picked her up at the airport for Nathan and Sarah's wedding. We stayed up far into the night, discussing such things as the advantages of having makeup tattooed on (wouldn't it save SO much time in the mornings if you didn't have to apply eye-shadow?). Catherine returned to Georgia and I went on to England, returning just in time for Kevin and Amy's wedding. The night before, I went over to the Bloom's and Kerin cut my hair - and did a fabulous job, I might add.

Meanwhile. Back in Georgia, Catherine was over at Ron's apartment one day. Ron and Catherine were 'almost' dating, and Michael was moving in with Ron. Catherine turned to Michael and said, conversationally, 'So what are you looking for in a woman, Michael?' Michael's red flags went up, and, suspicious of Catherine's reputation as a killer match-maker, replied vaguely that his ideal woman would be 'godly, intelligent, and someone whom he at least found attractive.' Eventually she did elicit from him that he liked long hair, and proceeded to tell him all about this Virginia friend of hers, who had very long hair.

Then I showed up at the Georgia conference with my new look. Catherine confesses to a feeling of despair upon seeing me, but apparently she stopped short of calling up Michael and telling him not to bother to come to the Sunday school social, after all. And somehow Michael was sufficiently undeterred by first impressions to ask for my email address anyway. All's well that ends well.

Rainy day

As Innigo said, 'Let me explain...No, there is no time. Let me summarise.' Our internet was down at work all day yesterday, thus curing me from my obsessive checking of email and blogs all day. On the plus side, I got numerous compliments on my new haircut. The funny thing was that I was asked at least five times, 'How does your husband like it?' or 'What does your husband think?' As I told Michael on the way home, 'You'd almost think it was universally recognised as a generally accepted principle that men preferred longer hair!' Michael has been very sweet and complimentary about it, which is comforting, as I would never have done it without his blessing. But it is SO nice to take care of! I love a new haircut. Nothing like a new look to brighten my mood.

Saturday was a fabulous day. It was sunny, which was auspicious to begin with, and there was the free haircut, of course. While in the salon I spotted my favourite lipstick, which I haven't been able to find for months, which I had finally given up on as being discontinued by the manufacturer. Of course I seized two, and discovered at the register that there was a buy-one-get-one-free sale going on. The day got better and better. I even picked up a penny in the parking lot.

But the time would fail me to tell the tale of the rest of the weekend. Suffice it to say that yesterday, on my way in to work, I ran through a descending barrier at a railroad crossing. That was exciting.

Today is rainy. Want to be at home curled up with a good book and a cup of hot chocolate too. =)

Bargains

I love bargains. I routinely pick up pennies in the parking lot and was delighted, this past week, to buy lots of milk at half price because the expiration date was looming. Our milk consumption has gone up drastically of late, so I knew we could drink a whole gallon in two days anyway.

Last night I was too uninspired to cook. Literally, I could think of nothing to make. I even opened the freezer. 'Ground beef? I can't think of anything to make with that. Never mind, it's not thawed anyway.' So Michael came to my rescue and suggested that we go out to eat. Naturally this led to the question of where. What sounded good to Baby? Michael started listing off options. 'Wait, wait!' I exclaimed, and ran to the recycle bin to look at last Sunday's paper (which gets delivered to our driveway despite the fact that we don't pay for it). 'Let me see whether we have a coupon for anything.' Sure enough, there was a coupon for Applebee's, so Applebee's it was.

I've been intending to get a haircut this weekend, and happened to ask a friend about donating my hair (which I've done the last few times I've gotten it drastically chopped). She sent me the link for Locks of Love, a non-profit organisation that makes wigs for cancer victims from donated hair. I read the site and could barely contain my excitement when I discovered that participating salons offer free haircuts for those donating their hair to Locks of Love. And there's one very near home! I am so excited. I had a coupon to get it done for $10, but free is even better.

Sing a song of sixpence

We arrived early. There was background music playing, and I was mainly tuning it out while flipping through the program. A very catchy tune came on, and my ear caught the line, ‘I’ve traveled the world and the seven seas.’ Wow, I thought. ‘That’s a great song,’ I told Michael. ‘I love the tune. Have you ever heard it before?’ He gave me an odd look. ‘Yes, it was pretty popular a while back.’ ‘Wow! What a great line! I like that song!’ Further listening yielded the line, ‘Some of them like to abuse you…some of them like to be abused…’ Oops. So much for that song. I never would have guessed that a song about the Seven Seas could have been found so wanting.

Visions of the night

Yet another interesting side effect of pregnancy (not wholly unexpected - after all, the pregnancy books give full warning and explanation) is the occurrence of vivid and dramatic dreams. This shouldn't be too startling, since my dreams are always pretty vivid anyway, but recently they've taken on exceptional brilliance. This, tinged with a faint rooting in reality, gives the whole thing a ludicrous tinge of the really absurd.

Last night we had our Bible study at Amanda's house. This was our 'off'' week for couples, meaning that we girls met to do our study while the guys met elsewhere to do their study. Amanda served us this delicious peanut butter chocolatey confection that was really outstanding - not too sickly sweet, like Reeses cups, but just right. I ate several bites.

So last night I had this dream about leaving Amanda's apartment, and somehow Michael and I were driving separately, and for some reason I had smuggled him a bit of the peanut butter treat. I had thought to meet up with him in the parking lot, but when I called his cell phone to locate him, he was already on 85 heading north! The confection was soft and gooey, and it started melting in my hand, and I kept speeding to try to catch up with him so I could give him a bite...very random. And flavoured with just enough truth to be really funny.

Speaking of first words

There was a time when it dawned on me that every big word actually meant something, and that unfamiliar collections of syllables were not merely senseless sounds. I don’t recall when this revelation hit me, but I do know that circa age four I just blithely assumed that if it didn’t make sense to me, it was nonsense and jumbles. It was very simple: I spoke normally, babies talked baby talk, and sometimes grown-ups talked jumbles.

I distinctly remember singing at least two hymns that contained lines of unintelligible jumbles. The funny thing was that no one else seemed to notice it. I fully realised that at times we were babbling, but since no one else minded, I gamely sang along. Most imprinted on my memory was the verse of Crown Him With Many Crowns that ran:

Crown Him the King of years
The potentate of time
Creator of the rolling spheres
Ineffably sublime!

Then there was the line in Wonderful Grace of Jesus that talked about ‘The scope of my transgressions.’ Obviously these sounds didn’t mean anything. And yet people were singing it in church! It was all very amusing. And no one else seemed to notice this irony but me.

Aha!

So can I drive in the HOV lane now?

Miscellany

So the Braves lost to the Astros last night. Not that I was awake to see it. Very sad, especially after such a hard-fought series.

Recently I was driving home from work and heard the following joke on the radio:

Two blondes were having a deep conversation. (Michael: Oh, I thought that was the punch line.)

'So which is farther away, Los Angeles or the moon?' asks one.

'Duh!' says the other. 'Can you see Los Angeles from here?'

Ha, ha! It was so funny that I called Ryan Hall on my cell phone to relate it to him.

Saturday was full of unexpected fun. There we were, sitting around at Dave and Andrea's reception (and I was eating chocolate-covered strawberries, my first sweets in seven weeks), and Ron announced, 'Here's the deal. We can either go hike Kennesaw Mountain, or all go home and take a nap, or go on over to Michael and Rose's place to watch Bertie and Jeeves.' He was joking, of course, but we seconded the invitation so heartily that several people came along. We grabbed spaghetti fixings and watched three episodes. It was a delightful instance of spontaneity, a very fortunate thing as I haven't felt up to really planning any hospitable ventures lately. Spontaneous spur-of-the-moment is definitely the lowest-stress way to go.

Pictures and Conversation

‘And what,’ said Alice, ‘is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?’

(Except this post doesn’t have pictures yet, because I still haven’t scanned any in.)

Last night over dinner Michael remarked, ‘Have you thought about the amazing generation gap our children are going to face?’

‘Why, Michael,’ I replied, ‘I’m surprised to hear you say that. You know I would never cast your age up to you – especially in front of the children! What makes you think they’d notice that their papa is so much older than their mama?’ (Hee, hee!)

Never one to be distracted by my frivolous attempts to bait him, he persisted with his point. ‘Do you realise that they will likely regard CDs as archaic?’

‘Now, that’s just not reasonable,’ I protested. ‘CDs are SO cutting edge!’

‘To you, perhaps. They’re going to be replaced by digital technology – CDs are giving way already to MP3s.’

‘That doesn’t count. MP3s don’t really exist. They’re just concept – a theory – an idea out in cyber-space.’

‘No, they do exist, and they’re the wave of the future.’

‘Well, the problem I see with MP3s, aside from the fact that they don’t really exist in tangible form, is that they rely on a computer to play music. You’re not just updating the standard – you’re introducing a whole new way of life. We went from stationery musical instruments to victrolas to record players to cassette tape decks to CD boomboxes – in all scenarios, you’re dealing with a central music-making station. An MP3 just isn’t the same. Are people going to start installing laptops in their cars so they can play their MP3 collections in the car? Ha!’ (Very good defense, I though, for someone who knows as little about it all as I do against someone who knows as much about it as Michael.)

Michael was not to be dissuaded, and began explaining the virtues of digital storage, comparing how many MP3 files could be saved in such small amounts of space to how many songs – 27, maybe? Or 30? – could be burned on a CD, and bringing up such topics as our digital camera’s flashcard for memory storage comparison. I held gamely to my point. ‘Well, no matter how many songs you can store on it, it won’t work if you don’t have something to look at and hold. A CD, now, not only has a very pretty shimmer effect, but can actually be picked up and played.’

‘You can still burn MP3s onto disks, you know,’ Michael pointed out. ‘That’s what MP3 players are for – it can be a separate entity from a computer.’

‘Well, then, if you burn it onto a CD, then it’s a CD. Like I said!’

‘Do you even know what CD means?’

‘Sure I do. Circular Disk! Hence the shape.’

Sometimes, as Cilla observed, a girl likes to be silly. Almost anything can happen, and she has to know which way to jump.

We watched one of the play-off games earlier this week – the one where Furcal hit a three-point home run, winning the game in the eleventh inning. It was highly amusing to ask Michael such questions as, ‘Now, are the bases all equidistant from each other?’ (a trick question, it turns out), ‘Is any base historically easiest to steal?’ and ‘Can you steal first? Why not? Well, maybe if the pitcher really wasn’t paying attention…’

Morning vignette

‘This milk tastes funny,’ I told Michael this morning.
‘It tastes fine to me.’
‘It tasted funny last night, too, when we opened the new gallon.’
‘When does it expire?’ he asked. He has a proper respect for spoiled milk.
‘No, it doesn’t taste spoiled. It’s just different. Maybe the cows got into the garlic pasture.’
‘Ha! I’ll bet Baby told you to say that!’
‘It’s true,’ I persisted. Put together, Baby and I have special powers. I feel like such a super-hero. (We just watched Daredevil recently.) Ha! What’s perfect aim or super-sonic hearing to an uncannily and acutely accurate sense of smell?

But where it comes from is the Key

Our office celebrates every birthday. With about 50+ employees, that amounts to a birthday party practically every week. (Whenever more than one birthday falls in the same week, we combine celebrations and the guests of honour have to compromise on the cake.) Earlier this week Melanie chose Key Lime Pie for her birthday cake. What an ingenious idea! It was delicious and refreshing – such a pleasant change from the usual cardboard cake with paste frosting.

As I ate the sumptuous slice of pie, I recollected a most fascinating article I read once about Key Lime Pie. Did you know that, in all likelihood, you have never had a slice of Key Lime Pie? (It seems that I hadn’t, before last year.) The recipe originated in the Florida Keys, where the Key Limes grow. Most of the limes you see in the stores are actually Tahitian Limes (not that they all come from Tahiti, but that is the variety). Tahitian Limes are small, round, and have a tough skin that transports well. Key Limes are much larger and softer, and would get bruised in shipping, so the only place you are going to find honest-to-goodness Key Limes is in the Florida Keys (mainly Key West) or in those very, very expensive mail-order catalogues where they sell fruit at outrageous prices and package it up cosily. Because the recipe for Key Lime Pie has come to be associated with a particular dish, and no longer refers to the actual main ingredient, it is permissible to sell Key Lime Pie (in stores, restaurants, etc.) which in fact is not made with Key Limes and not get charged with false advertising. But unless you’ve actually traveled to the Florida Keys and ordered a slice of genuine Key Lime Pie, you’ve probably been eating Tahitian Lime Pie all your life.