And one meeting every month will be a potluck.

“At this morning’s team meeting,” I told sanguinity yesterday, “we did an icebreaker for fun, even though we all know each other.”

“You tell me these things just to horrify me,” she said.
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Last night when I was rummaging around in the bottom kitchen drawer, aka “the drug drawer” (also home of extension cords and light bulbs), Simone the cat was very keen on supervising. A few minutes later, sanguinity saw her stretching up to pat at the drawers some more. Sang opened the next drawer up, which is the tea drawer. Simone hopped in and started excavating boxes of tea. She was serious and methodical: she wanted this one gone, and then that one. She made herself a space big enough to sit in, which I thought was maybe her objective although she still seemed a bit dissatisfied. Then I made her get out, and I put the tea back and shut the drawer. She started a campaign to get into the cabinet next to the drawers.

“Do you think there’s a mouse in there somewhere?” sanguinity said. I thought uneasily of Lily and the stove.

The mystery was solved when I made myself a cup of Super Relaxing Tea.
Relaxing Tea
I’ve been buying this at Asian supermarkets since long before FuBonn, and it is serious stuff– once Jenny had a cup at lunch and barely made it the ten blocks home on her bike before a nap came on.
I was sipping and watching TV when I noticed Simone rubbing her face all over my discarded teabag on the coaster. She picked it up and carried it into her cardboard box. Sang went to the kitchen and confirmed– catnip is the second ingredient.

running resolution

I came up with a New Year’s resolution that felt satisfying as soon as it occurred to me: I want to finish the Portland Marathon this year without knee pain.

My knees have never kept me from finishing a race or an event, but they’ve slowed me down, and are definitely my weak point. Pain-proofing them will involve a little weight loss, strength and flexibility work, steady and abundant mileage, and maybe a backpacking trip in early September. :D

I’m starting from sedentary-ish, a mile’s walk daily and four miles’ walk/run over the weekend. It feels like very little, but that’s good. I still need to figure out the plan for strength and flexibility training.

Also, I don’t know if it will stick but today I went to dailymile and entered my two walks so far this year and looked at what people in Portland were up to. Feel free to friend me if you hang out there! I’m trying to convince my brain that working out and being active is the norm, by showing it people all around me doing it.

books read and holidays celebrated

I had a lovely holiday season with family and friends and road trips. I didn’t take many photos, but here’s one of sanguinity with her BFF Miss Piggy, on the night that thrihyrne and evannichols led us through the annual Extreme Holiday Lights display around the corner from their place:

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I’ve finished pulling together the list of books I read in 2012. You can see the complete list here as a Google doc if you want.

I’ll be adding these nine to my LibraryThing collection, bringing my collection there to 90 books in all:

  • Me…Jane, by Patrick O’Donnell (picture book)
  • How to Die of Embarrassment Every Day, by Ann Hodgman (middle-grade memoir)
  • Black Hearts, by Holly Black (YA)
  • Please Ignore Vera Dietz, by A.S. King (YA)
  • Every Day, by David Levithan (YA)
  • Dairy Queen, by Catherine Gilbert Murdock (YA)
  • Code Name Verity, by Elizabeth Wein (YA)
  • Middlemarch, by George Eliot (adult fiction)
  • Adrift, by Steven Callahan (adult nonfiction)

You know, I was going to write a blurb about each one of these, but so many end-of-year book lists have gone by on my screen in the last few days that I don’t think I really need to add another. Maybe instead I’ll call out the audiobooks that got me through a lot of dishwashing: Ruby Dee reading Their Eyes Were Watching God, Natalie Moore with the perfect Wisconsin-teenager accent in Dairy Queen, and Steve Martin talking about his stand-up days in Born Standing Up.

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Happy New Year to all, and best wishes for a happy and fruitful 2013!

Reed in December

It’s been raining all weekend, but today wasn’t too cold. I pulled on my rain gear and walked down to the canyon at Reed. It felt great to be out.

I didn’t spot the resident beavers, but they’re around.

I don’t think of camellias as December flowers, but they look as good now as they do any other time.

In the more urban part of my walk, I listened to Sara Zarr’s How to Save a Life until my player’s battery died. Both this one and David Levithan’s Every Day, which I read last week, keep making me think in the back of my head while I read, “How’s the author going to pull this off? Corner is painted…what’s the path out of it?” I sort of wish I could turn this writerly perspective off, because it’s different from wondering how the characters will solve their problems. Every Day weakened a little at the end, I thought, with a Brand New Choice taking center stage. (And the main character’s last machination? It’s in character but kind of obnoxious, I thought, a little insulting and unnecessary!) I still don’t know what will happen with How to Save a Life. But highly worthwhile, both of them.

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Sanguinity and I watched Terminator 2: Judgment Day last night! I hadn’t seen it since college. Why is it called “Judgment Day”? It isn’t actually about Judgment Day. Anyway, you know what I could hardly stand? The way Sarah and John both have their bangs in their eyes. Srsly I was like, fine save the world but please get your hair out of your face! It’s no coincidence that I trimmed my bangs this morning.

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Work this week, and then a week and a half off! I secretly love the budget furloughs. I’d never take this many vacation days on my own for “no reason,” meaning no extended travel, but I’m psyched.

That December Meme

First sentence (or two) from the first entry of each month in 2012:

January: Happy New Year! I have been away–- very far away, it felt like.

February: I got word today that the book Circulating Communities: The Tactics and Strategies of Community Publishing, which contains a chapter by Write Around Portland, which chapter in turn contains a short piece I wrote during my first WRAP workshop, is hot off the presses!

March: My internet friends tell me it’s World Book Day, which looks to be mostly in the UK and rather like Free Comic Book Day, but with fifteen years of history and recognition by UNESCO. Cool.

April: At work I’ve gone from 3/4 time to full time for the next couple of months, to help fill in for someone on medical leave. Last week was my first 40-hour work week in ages. Let the whining commence!

May: Authors whose books I admire greatly but have to read over and over again because I never quite get a complete understanding of them: Ellen Raskin, E.L. Konigsburg, Diana Wynne Jones, Henry James.

June: I peeked in at Lynda Barry’s Tumblr, which I’d sort of forgotten about for awhile, and read about the four-minute diary: “Why is it so hard to keep a diary? IT ISN’T! Keeping a diary is much easier if you limit your writing to four minutes each day: two minutes spent writing a list of what you remember from the day before and then two minutes making a list of things you saw.”

July: The practical reason I’m reviewing these books in the same post is that they are both due at the library.

August: I had a hankering for orange cheez powder, as in Kraft mac and cheese or cheap cheese crackers, so last night I tried cheez-flavored rice cakes, and ate some store-brand cheesy crackers, and also had some tuna mac (except it turns out we didn’t have any tuna in the cupboard, so I put in frozen peas instead).

September: In my Labor Day browsing I ended up reading about Joe Hill, the Wobbly labor activist executed by Utah in 1915. I was surprised to see that the text of his last will and testament were already familiar to me– as a song we sang at Girl Scout Camp.

October: I had jury duty at the county courthouse yesterday and today. Yesterday I was tickled to find myself in voir dire with Phillip Margolin, who writes bestselling legal thrillers!

November (draft post): I’ve had a soft spot for The New Criterion since the ’80s, in spite of its conservative politics. I used to take a bound volume or two to my library desk with me at Reed, and read articles when I needed a break from the Derrida and Post-Whatever I was trying to wrap my brain around.

December: Text sent to sanguinity at 4:50 p.m. yesterday: “Coming home a little early– yay! Because my back hurts– booo!”

Here Comes Santa Claus

Of the five Christmas albums I own that include “Here Comes Santa Claus,” four of them have it as the first track:

  • Christmas with the Chipmunks, The Chipmunks
  • Croon and Swoon: A Classic Christmas, Bing Crosby & the Andrews Sisters
  • Christmas RFD, Merle Haggard
  • A Very Special Christmas, The Pointer Sisters

Only one, Christmas Guitar Dreams with the Legendary Joe Pass, puts it later on the album. The first track is “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!”

Coincidence or unwritten rule? It does have a nice anticipatory tone for a lead-in.

Rose Meringues

The holidays arrived and I was like HEY I SHOULD MAKE FOOD PRESENTS, but of course what came to mind was something I’d never tried before. Rose-flavored meringues, you guys! Pink, and maybe in the shape of roses, delicate yet shippable, and related to Portland.

I made my first attempt over the weekend, with one of the eggs from my co-worker’s happy pampered hens. One egg makes a whole cookie sheet of meringues. But they were missing deliciousness. The rose flavoring was from food-quality distilled rose, um, stuff, but it needed another note to ground it. Vanilla? Cardamom? Lemon?

Also, I used powdered sugar, because Joy of Cooking said either powdered or granulated was okay, but I think granulated would make the taste and texture sparkle a little more.

I had a vague idea that cutting the corner off of a plastic bag and squeezing meringue out of it would magically enable me to make rose shapes, but it enabled me to make piles of pink toothpaste instead. Or pink sparkly unicorn poop.

Maybe I’ll have the perfect recipe ready for next Christmas.

My other idea was hazelnut and dried-cherry granola– Pacific Northwest ingredients, right? and not as sweet as the meringues. I found a recipe, but when it was time to go to the store I was like, wheat germ and sesame seeds and hazelnuts and oatmeal and this recipe lady likes to use a mix of quick and rolled oats? When I am going to Trader Joe’s which has perfectly delicious varieties of granola in a box anyway? It seemed kind of pointless. I think I’ll go back to specializing in three-ingredient recipes.

So there you have it, the things I won’t be sending out for the holidays and can blab about on the internet!

Text sent to sanguinity at 4:50 p.m. yesterday: “Coming home a little early– yay! Because my back hurts– booo!” I was quite gleeful at having caught an early bus despite the tweaky back.

Text sent to sanguinity about half an hour later: “Never mind, bus rear-ended at 26th and Powell. Will be delayed.”

Even though hardly anyone felt the hit, including the driver (I’m still not sure how she knew), a supervisor was called and we all got off and waited in the mist for the next bus. But not before the bus driver brought the car driver on board to get paperwork started. Car Driver faced us all like a champ and said, “I am SO SORRY, everyone.” And get this! nobody bitched about it. #loveportland

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In reading news, I started Code Name Verity and could tell right away it’s as good as everyone’s been saying.

And I finished Kage Baker’s The Sons of Heaven, which I consider the last of the novels as far as The Company series goes. I know there’s a prequel about Edward, and some short-story collections and novellas I plan to read, but it will all be filling-in. The Sons of Heaven was a gossipy and satisfying drawing together of threads, and that carried me through the Big Battle At The End (I’m not a fan of those usually, especially in fantasy novels) and the difficulty of nearly-omnipotent characters and how to make them interesting.

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This afternoon I put on the season’s first Christmas music and my very favorite holiday album, 1987’s A Very Special Christmas. It’s a benefit compilation for the Special Olympics and has Bruce Springsteen’s “Merry Christmas Baby,” Alison Moyet’s “The Coventry Carol,” and Stevie Nicks’ “Silent Night.” (“Whoever that is, I’m scared,” sanguinity said.) I was so psyched I did ALL the dishes on the counters, and there were a lot of them.

voir dire

I had jury duty at the county courthouse yesterday and today. Yesterday I was tickled to find myself in voir dire with Phillip Margolin, who writes bestselling legal thrillers! As the attorneys were going over concepts of reasonable doubt, burden of proof, etc., whenever they got tired of calling on the rest of us for our vague, uncertain answers, they’d call on Mr. Margolin to deliver the concise and correct version. He didn’t make it onto the jury–go figure. ;)

I served on that jury but still had to come back to the general jury pool today, and was called into voir dire again just before lunch. Today’s judge added two questions to the list I’d seen the day before–

  • 1) what are your hobbies, and
  • 2) what word would the person who knows you best use to describe you.

    • I never list writing as a hobby. I usually don’t bring it up in conversations about my occupation, with legal and tax authorities, but it’s not a hobby. So it was, “Uh, I read a lot.” ;)

    And although I was under oath, the sanguinity who knows me best would either refuse to answer, or the word would be “evil.” Reader, I evaded and said she would call me “the quiet one.” Sara and anyone else who knows us won’t have trouble cracking the code.

    Funny how social constraints kept me from just saying “evil.” Voir dire is a strange mixture of trying to please and trying to get the heck out of the jury box. Several people said their word was “reliable.” Really, the person who knows you best would sum you up with “reliable”?

    Anyway, I was rejected and got to come home, yay.

    Good Luck to All of You, Joe Hill

    In my Labor Day browsing I ended up reading about Joe Hill, the Wobbly labor activist executed by Utah in 1915. I was surprised to see that the text of his last will and testament were already familiar to me– as a song we sang at Girl Scout Camp.

    My will is easy to decide,
    For there is nothing to divide.
    My kin don’t need to fuss and moan,
    “Moss does not cling to a rolling stone.”

    My body? Oh, if I could choose
    I would to ashes it reduce,
    And let the merry breezes blow,
    My dust to where some flowers grow.

    Perhaps some fading flower then
    Would come to life and bloom again.
    This is my Last and final Will.
    Good Luck to All of you,
    Joe Hill

    I think he would have been pleased about the disposition of his ashes (as described in the article). And also that the Girl Scouts kept his words alive while washing their melmac plates after dinner.

    Yesterday was the last cookout of the summer, with evannichols and thrihyrne, and tomorrow will have the appropriate back-to-school feel as I start a free class on stats at Coursera. Happy Labor Day!