AJAX BELL

Author of the Queen City Boys books

Category Archives: weather report


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What Spain Was Like

“She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white noise that is London, that Damien’s theory of jet lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can’t move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.”

– William Gibson, Pattern Recognition (full quote here)

Yesterday morning (relatively speaking, to my current sense of time), I got on a plane in Barcelona.  It flew out over the Mediterranean, which was spectacularly blue, and then turned sharply and went directly over Sitges, a town I had visited just days before.  I wept copiously with a great sense of loss as the plane went over the entire length of the Pyrenees, until reached the Bay of Biscay and turned over the Atlantic, towards Philadephia.

I am presently too tired, too soul-lagged to tell you about it.  Indeed I may never getting around to writing a narrative of it, but I promise lots and lots of pictures as soon as I get all 500+ of them sorted and tagged and all that modern day nonsense that allows me to foist my living room vacation slide show on you.  For now my soul is still somewhere over the Pyrenees, perhaps, still dreaming of the Mediterranean.


What Spain Was Like

Spain was a taut, dry drum-head
Daily beating a dull thud
Flatlands and eagle’s nest
Silence lashed by the storm.
How much, to the point of weeping, in my soul
I love your hard soil, your poor bread,
Your poor people, how much in the deep place
Of my being there is still the lost flower
Of your wrinkled villages, motionless in time
And your metallic meadows
Stretched out in the moonlight through the ages,
Now devoured by a false god.

All your confinement, your animal isolation
While you are still conscious
Surrounded by the abstract stones of silence,
Your rough wine, your smooth wine
Your violent and dangerous vineyards.

Solar stone, pure among the regions
Of the world, Spain streaked
With blood and metal, blue and victorious
Proletarian Spain, made of petals and bullets
Unique, alive, asleep – resounding.

– Pablo Neruda


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An open letter to Sherman Alexie

Just read a line in a Sherman Alexie story about standing in line at Bartell’s and suddenly I’m so homesick I’m not sure I can live through the heartbreak of it. In my head I ask Sherman Alexie if he imagines how many of his throw away lines profoundly affect people?  I think of every word I’ve put out there, every bit of fiction I’ve written, and no one has ever come back to me with the important words, with the phrases that I labored over, they only come to tell me about the how they were moved by my fast lines, the ones that drop out, that I don’t consider at all before I put them to paper.

Perhaps the lines I don’t labor over mean the most, come more truly from me?  Perhaps there is no meaning in any of it and will just keeping spilling out words, looking for the turn of phrase that will free my soul and find it someday.  Perhaps Sherman Alexie labored over that line and still will never know will never know how his two sentences made me break my own heart.  I could write him a letter and tell him, but I would labor too hard over the words, I would lose the importance of sharing what he gave me.  I have always been writing this letter to him in my head, through out the years, every time I read his stories and poems.  A letter that never makes it to paper, to computer screen, never achieves more than some small form of therapy for me.

I am talking to Sherman in my head (can I call you, Sherman, I feel we are close enough now) about my homesickness, about how I cannot ever really understand where he is from and he cannot understand how I am from where he is now.  I tell him it is a continuum that no one but me can see, a story that can’t quite be told, but is important all the same.  And the The Butchies pop up on shuffle on the old mp3 player and I start to cry because this is more homesickness than a soul can bear.  But this makes me get up and start to cook dinner: fettuccine alfredo with smoked salmon (real, PNW smoked salmon), peas and caramelized onions.  Because I am homesick and if I lived close enough that I could call my mom and ask if I could come over she would walk to me to a restaurant near her house (one Sherman Alexie has surely been too) and I would order some variation of this dish because you don’t really find it anywhere else in the world, not the way we make it in Seattle.

And while I am chopping onions the mp3 player turns again and gives me Kevin Gordon singing Watching the Sun Go Down, and I remember how I stopped at 6:42 am, on my way to work, to photograph the sunrise over an electrical power station, and got distracted by some horses too.  I think of how the redbuds are surely more beautiful this year than they have ever been before, blooming riotously, everywhere, making the edges of every roadway glow purple.  I think of how  the heat in Tennessee makes me feel warm all the way through to my bones, like I’ve never been warm before.

So I tell Sherman that he is lucky indeed, to be able wait in line at Bartell’s, but he has to go through cold rain to get there and I am saved by the sun  and the green in spring and the sounds, all the sounds, here in the dirty South.  Perhaps I am homesick for a place that no longer exists.  A place I visited, moved through in childhood, that is just a fairytale now, I can not go back.  My adult self does not have the magic to cross back over the boundaries of the places I’ve been before, I can only go to new places or create them myself. And I’m still crying when I sit down to eat my dinner, but not because I miss anything.  I am so lucky to have been so many places, both real and imagined. Lucky to be me and to be still so full of emotions good and bad (love) about all of those places I have been and the people in them.  Even the rude lady in the Bartell’s line that you have to tell to fuck all the way off.  So thanks, Sherman, for reminding of my home, the past one, the new one, the one that is always me and goes everywhere inside my heart.  I’m certain that you never knew that namedropping Bartell’s in a story would make some girl in Tennessee break out the fancy smoked salmon from way back home and cook herself a good dinner on a night when she would otherwise have been too tired, too worn down by work, to do more than make a quesadilla.  Thanks for dinner, Sherman, I really feel like we are close now.

 

(Pictures taken early this morning in Tennessee, when I stopped, before I even had coffee, to remember that there is beauty in the world.  Even when you feel like you break to pieces because of the stress that swirls around you and puts the anxiety inside you, there is still the color purple and leaves that were not that green yesterday and sunrises.  The redbuds really are spectacular this year.)


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Adventures in substitutions

It’s a cold, cold winter night here, so I did the only thing one can do, cooked and baked until the house was warm and smelled good.

Quinoa Red Lentil Soup


I used this recipe (the stove top version which only took about 35 minutes) which came highly recommended from a trusted friend.  I saw it and thought, oh I have all those things, I’ll make that.  HAHAHAH!  Well, I had quinoa and red lentils.  Of the spices I only had fresh ginger, paprika, cumin and thyme.   So I used those and substituted 2 tbl of green curry paste for everything else.  Also I didn’t have any of those vegetables, so I used a yellow onion, diced, a yellow squash (the zucchini like kind), also diced and a can of diced tomatoes and a couple cloves of garlic, finely chopped.  I did follow the directions pretty closely, despite all the substitutions.   At the end of cooking I also put half of it through the blender until it was smooth and added it back in with the rest (a secret that improves 85% of soups).

I think it turned out great.  Would be excellent with a dollop of sour cream but there’s few things that isn’t true about.

Apple cake


2 eggs
1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 cup applesauce
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp pumpkin spice
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 apples, peeled & chopped

Directions:  In large bowl, beat eggs, applesauce and oil until smooth.  Add sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, pumpkin spice, baking soda, salt and mix well.  Add flour, beat until smooth. Fold in apples. Pour into greased and floured 9 by 13 pan. Bake at 350F degrees for 50-55 minutes.

I substituted Bob’s Red Mill all-purpose gluten-free baking flour.  Also I normally would do 3/4 cup applesauce and no oil, but I was unsure about this flour mixture, because I’ve never used it and I figured a little oil might help.

I’ve used previous versions of this recipe (I seem to reinvent it every year, whole wheat flour, less sugar, no oil, now gluten-free) to make muffins for which it is excellent.   The original recipe called for 2c sugar and a cinnamon and sugar glaze, but I really prefer things less sweet.  You should experiment until it tastes how you like.


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Things and books and other things

I’m in the market for a used dresser or side board or cabinet of sorts to replace the cheap, small emergency shelves set up in my sewing nook.  I’m simply hoping to stumble across the right thing in a thrift store or whatever and paint it (or I figured I’d be happy with something like this).  However I stumbled across this re-do the other day and now suddenly I need something I can refinish with a squid.  Like I will waste away, pining for a squid dresser if I don’t get one.

click for pictures from the books locations, in case you werent already wishing you were in Provence right now

I just finished reading Guy Gavriel Kay’s Ysabel.  The Lions of al-Rassan is one of my favorite books and I really enjoyed The Last Light of the Sun.  If I find I like an author I generally seek out more of their books, but I rarely read anything about those books or the author.  I’ve been burned too many times by finding out the creator is a jerk and I find it’s easier to just read a story in the void and only bring to it my current preconceptions of the world and not any negativity about the author or to be pre-influenced by reviews I’ve read.  So based on my two previous reads it seemed safe to assume that Kay wrote character stories in fictionalized versions of historical events (al-Rassan is essentially El Cid and Moorish Spain and Sun is Alfred the Great defeating the Vikings). Which he does write, right? He just also writes other things, apparently.

Ysabel reads like a YA urban fantasy, you know the ones where you’re just a teenager in the city and suddenly you get caught up in the drama of the fairy world? (See Charles de Lint‘s Newford saga stories or Holly Black‘s Modern Faerie tales.) Kay’s story relied more on the strange possibility of magic and history colliding and less actual fairy tales and the setting, Provence, was as much of a character as person in the book.  It was enjoyable and neatly written, it made me dream and think and still left something lacking.  I just didn’t engage enough with any of the characters.  I was compelled to keep reading by the mystery and strange magic and French Celtic history.  And while the main characters were likeable enough, they were real enough, still they just didn’t make me care enough.  I’d recommend this, but save it for the airplane or the beach.

After reading I tried to sleep, somewhat unsuccessfully, because of a string of late, late night thunderstorms that seemed so threatening that I got up from my bed under the windows and went and curled up on the couch (not under windows and further from big, bad thunder).  But as I drove in to work this morning, the storms had left behind a jumbled mess of crazy clouds rushing out and everything is so very, vibrantly, overwhelmingly green, especially against the grey sky.  And I remember, as I do every year, that I (and surely everyone else) continues to live in Tennessee because spring is so sensational.  It’s really astounding how the trees fill in and the colors.  It’s like God is talking directly to you, just for a little bit, daring you notice every leaf and every change and be grateful for it.  And it will be hot soon enough, spring so fleeting like the first flush of being in love and overwhelmed by it, but it comes back every year.  It’s worth the storms and the heat waves and the grim winter.  The Steve Earle line, “Tennessee is green in spring” is like the understatement of the century but at the same time anyone who lives here understands the depth and meaning of that little statement.


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Sunday dinner

I’m heading into work late.  It’s way too cold, icy and snowy to go outside.  In lieu of doing work this morning, I typed up my Sunday dinner menu for you.

Spice Rubbed Lamb Chops

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon freshly ground cloves
1 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 large lamb shoulder blade chops

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.  Mix the 2 teaspoons salt, 1 teaspoon pepper, cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon together. Brush each lamb chop lightly with the olive oil and season with the spice mixture. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Cook the chops in the skillet, without crowding until brown and crisp on both sides, about 3 or 4 minutes for both sides. Finish chops in the oven for 1 minute for medium rare, or to desired doneness.

(I substituted cayenne for cloves, which I realize isn’t the same, but worked out very well.)

Chickpea and Leek Soup

5 medium leeks
1 can chickpeas
2 cloves of garlic chopped finely
1 medium potato
4-5 cups of vegetable or chicken broth
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan plus extra for garnish
1 Tbs butter
2 Tbs olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Dice and boil the potato, set aside.  Clean and slice the leeks, lengthwise and then in narrow strips.  Melt the butter in a heavy bottomed stock pot with the olive oil and add the garlic. Once they begin to soften, add the leeks and a generous pinch of salt.

Once the leeks are soft and smelling good, add the pre-cooked potato and the chickpeas. cook about 2 minutes then add the 2/3rds the broth.  Simmer 15 minutes.  At this point you have to decide how you want to serve the soup – as it is, puréed or semi-puréed. I blend about half of it and ad it back to rest of the soup. Add the rest of the broth to your desired thickness)and the grated Parmesan.  Serve with more grated fresh Parmesan.

I served all of this with butter lettuce salad, as well.

Over all, super easy.  Since there’s only two if us, we usually end up with enough soup for two more meals.  I’ll probably add chicken and mushrooms to it when I reheat it, to keep it new.


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Coming up for air again and again

[Most of this post has been sitting in ‘draft’ form for a week or more.  Lately I just can’t seem to line myself up to post, or finish any thing really. Will work on posting more regularly here to hopefully give my non-work life some structure. My weeks ago post saying that I am all over the place has definitely been true.]

Went Weds. night last week to the seeekrit pre-opening of the Mas Tacos storefront location.  She did an amazing job on the location.  It feels like it’s just a south of the border taco joint that’s kind of outside time and space. The atmosphere made the tacos even better. Especially the awesome jukebox. They open on Tuesday, if you’re in Nashville, you should go.

I’m also desperately awaiting the opening of the Brentwood location of the Local Taco [HA!  Since I wrote this, it’s opened and I’ve been–didn’t like it as much as the original location, but we did go on opening day, so they get some super slack].  This is my new favorite place ever.  Partly because I love tacos and having more places to get them is good.  Partly because the tacos are gooooood.  And once they had sauteed Swiss chard with Shitake mushrooms as a side that was so spectacularly out of this world, I don’t even know how to explain it to you.  I do know I’ll be cooking more in the near future and I see a lot of experimenting with Swiss chard until I can duplicate that amazing dish. YUM YUM YUM.

It’s been stupidly hot in Nashville.  Fortunately I am house sitting for some friends that have a lovely pool.  Air conditioning is great for keeping cool.  Swimming before bed is even better.  It turns out that if you go swimming right at sunset, the bats are circling the yard and skimming the top of the pool for about 20 minutes. It’s a little weird, as they fly low right over you, down the length of the pool and then up. I can’t tell if they are skimming the surface accidentally while looking for bugs, or if they are cooling their bellies on hot evenings. It’s kind of like being in a nature show though!  Last night a hawk sat on the pavement surrounding the pool, just watching, until he noticed me and flew up to watch from the nearby tree.  I wonder if he was waiting for the bats?

Work is, well, work.  I know I haven’t been writing here.  I could say I don’t have time, but that isn’t true.  I’ve spent a lot of evenings reading on the porch (until it’s gets too dark or too hot, hot usually happens first), or out running around with Talk to Owls, or just, I dunno, pretending I’m getting “stuff” done but mostly flitting around like a spaz.  Housesitting means vacation really, since most everything I think I should be doing requires me to be in my own house.  Work has leveled out to normal hours. So I have time, though mostly I’m too tired to bother doing anything creative, fun or useful. I don’t see that changing in the next few months.  Plus my learning curve on the job is really steep right now (speaking of, I should totally be working right at this second–I’m purposely procrastinating until I calm down enough to feel like I’m actually absorbing information).  I guess what I am trying to get at (ironically in an all over the place kind of way) is that I’m completely scattered.  Mostly in my home/personal life, but that’s definitely bled into work (not in getting work done, but in understanding the work and fitting it in to a convenient pattern).  Even though I am reading and swimming and trying not to overwhelm myself with “Right now I SHOULD be doing…) still I feel like everything is speeding by at this accelerated pace that was created by work in the 6 weeks following the flood.  Working less doesn’t seem to be allowing me to fit more into my life.  I can’t seem even to focus enough to explain to myself how I feel right now.  Loose ends, I suppose.  Lots and lots of loose ends. Come too short to even tie together.


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we work to make our dreams come true

Well here it is Tuesday again.  Fortunately for me, this Tuesday was preceded by a Monday and a weekend, not by 40 other Tuesdays as has so recently been the case.  Talks-to-Owls and I took advantage of that first weekend of freedom and escaped the city to lounge about in a hotel room and walk in Botanical Gardens and see Museums.  Work continues apace. I haven’t wrapped my head around not working 65+ hours a week.  I am exceedingly busy this week, despite not working as much, or perhaps because I am not working as much.  This weekend I will perhaps try and organize my life some.  Next weekend I am going to Seattle for the holiday.  After that everything will become somewhat more normal.  Or become the new normal, I guess, since it seems everything in my life has changed in the last seven weeks.  Actually I’m not sure at all what normal will be now.  I am just making it up as I go along.  Although I suppose that’s what we are all doing all the time.

So, uh, yeah.  I spent the weekend wandering museums while wearing sundresses.  I’m mentally all over the place.  I feel vague, distracted, sort of unable to work and unable to think or process anything that isn’t work. I wish I  lived in museum/sundress land all the time (picture above is from my phone to capture my Saturday night, what joy! wine and a view).  Plus the heat index here is over 100°F and is supposed to stay that way until, uh, September, I guess.  So that isn’t very motivating.

(Thoughts about the oil spill and other news redacted from this post for another time when I’m making more sense.)


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Flowers North and South

I just spent a week in Boston, only to return and find that it’s really, really spring in Tennessee.  I took only a handful of pictures while up north.  And then mucked it up while uploading from my camera and somehow half of them disappeared. Oops.  Here’s the few I have left:

click to view all

Most of the missing pictures are also of flowers, since that’s all I ever seem to remember to shoot. A very European neighborhood, entirely paved over but filled with flower boxes in each window sill is miraculously beautiful!

Back in Tennessee every single spring flower in my neighborhood has opened up, so I took and afternoon to walk around and try and capture a little bit of the joy:

click to see all pictures


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rainy days and Sundays

click for full size

I had the best day at Cheekwood.  It rained, but not too hard, so I dressed in my Seattle gear and was unfazed by it as we stomped through the gardens.  The museum had a superbly curated American Impressionist exhibit.  But the high point was the security guard.  We were going to take a quick pass through the Fabergé exhibit, as I’d seen it before but my companion hadn’t and we stayed because the security guard was giving a long, impromptu history lecture on the exhibit to a bunch of wealthy, 60+ white women.  He was a 40-something black man and his speech patterns and slang indicated sort of an average Southern, probably lower class background.  But.  Oh man, I can barely describe the beauty of the lecture he gave.  He had clearly spent a ton of time researching the history of Fabergé, the Russian Revolution, the Czars and all.  I sat on a bench with my phone and tried to transcribe notes of what he was saying.  All I managed to get down was:

“Yeah, Fabergé don’t make no junk.”
“You on that internet? Get on Netflix and get ‘The Czar’s Eggs.’ It’ll tell you about this. About that Nicholas and his Czarina and that one boy he had with the hemophilia. He was okay, then this knucklehead, Rasputin, comes in and it’s just a shame that People’s Revolution killed all those people.  Just a shame.”
“That artist [Fabergé] you got to give a high five too, the highest of fives.”

He went on about this one particular object , the Imperial Lilies-of-the-Valley Basket, and how there were 42 Fabergé eggs in the world but the Imperial Lilies-of-the-Valley Basket was the only one.  He told the ladies how the Czarina loved it so much that she took it from room to room with her so she could always admire it.  He knew, in depth, about each object in the Fabergé collection, he spoke how they were made and what they were used for.  Talked about Fabergé using his art to gain favor with the Czar by pleasing the Czarina with gifts.

As we were leaving he was telling about how everyone should come back for the upcoming Chihuly exhibit and demonstrated a fairly extensive about of knowledge on the that subject as well.

It was so pleasing, so wonderful to hear someone who was clearly self taught, speak so eloquently (in his own way), proudly and so knowledgeably about art.  Really, it was joyous and filled me with glee.

Afterwards we walked the water gardens and the Japanese garden in the rain.  Sat for a while under the roofed viewing area in the Japanese garden while it rained harder.

Then I spent too much money in the gift shop.  And had a lovely conversation with the woman who worked there (Mom, I think it was same woman as when you and I went) about art and about how Chihuly is such a marketing maniac that you can’t barely stock a gift shop without his say so (I didn’t get the impression that she cared for him much, heh).

Sometimes I think I could stay in Nashville forever if I could work at Cheekwood.  I wonder if they need a digital archivist?  I could maintain their botany library and the family’s private collections!  Heaven!

Here are some of my favorites of the Impressionist pictures I saw today.

Otto Stark – French Garden

Luther Emerson Van Gorder – Japanese Lanterns

Lilliam Wescott Hale – An Old Cherry Tree

Edith Baretto Parsons – Turtle Baby

Charles Coutney Curran – In the Luxembourg Garden

There was also a William Posey Silva piece that I can’t find a picture of that was called “Garden of Dreams” c. 1925 That was lovely.  Definitely want to see more of his work.

Yes, today was very good day.

—

Picture taken today with my phone, out the rain-streaked upper window of the Cheekwood mansion.  The window was in the middle of the Impressionists exhibit and I thought it looked Impressionistic too.


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How I spent my winter vacation

Today was a do nothing day.  It snowed and snowed and snowed.  Tons of snow. Okay, well, a little snow in general, but a lot of snow for Nashville.  We just aren’t equipped or prepared for it this far south.  And it was a little layer of ice, a few inches of snow, more ice, more snow and a final topping of ice.  Suffice to say, given the opportunity (and a rare Saturday off work), I stayed in bed.

Which isn’t to say I did nothing.  I managed to some stuff.  I did dress up all warmly this morning to go clear the snow off the porch and steps (for the fourth time), only to discover that after the previous clearings there was nothing left but ice.  Am considering dumping a couple buckets of warm water down it tomorrow.

Since I had pants on already, I took a few pictures, just for the memories.  I confess, I just don’t like snow.  I get it, I mean, I know people like it.  They like snow sports and days off school and the sort of freedom to goof off that Americans get when it’s a rare or major snow.  But I don’t like it.  Yes, it is pretty when it’s freshly fallen.  Yes, it is quiet and pleasant for a romantic walk or an introspective one (if dressed properly).  Still, I don’t like it.  Sledding?  Cold, wet gross and mostly associated with getting snow down the back of my pants. Not fun.  Ditto snowball fights and snow angels. And, after the initial pretty snowfall, urban snow is just gross. Mashed up, dirty, trodden on and weirdly polluted.  Traffic is awful.  Especially in places like Tennessee where almost no one knows how to drive in it, and the few transplants who do either opt not too, or get too cocky and forget that all the other people on the road have no idea what they are doing.  I just don’t like it.  It makes me cranky, crotchety, bitter and unpleasant.

Um, oops, oh yes, I wasn’t ranting, I was detailing my day.  So I went outside.  Then I came back in and hunkered down with my laptop all day.  I installed all the software that had fallen by the wayside when I updated my OS.  I reinstalled all my fonts and lost some time to finding a few pretty new ones (I do love fonts).  I cleaned out my browser bookmarks (backed up first, of course).  5 years of bookmarks.  FIVE YEARS.  Whole folders of hundreds of links I hadn’t even looked at in 2 or 3 or more years.  There’s something oddly satisfying about doing that kind of clean up.  I tided a few folders on my computers.  Organized some photos.  Backed up everything on my external drive.  Managed to clear up 54 gigs of space on my laptop (a lot of stuff had gotten duplicated in the transfer after the OS upgrade, I guess).  Spent a little time tweaking things, as Windows 7 is easy and lovely and light but still new in some ways. I made to-do lists of other things I need to do (which I will start on as soon as I post this). I shopped for and purchased a new bedspread (mine is functional, and in decent shape, it’s just uncomfortable and I kind of hate it). It was a day of nothing and still something of a useful day of clearing up loose ends.

I also watched Twilight.  Now, I haven’t read the books and have no intention of it.  I have very clear idea of the plot through the whole series and I know why some people like it and why others don’t.  I’ve heard critiques of author and of the film.  The whole thing borders on a pop culture joke. Still, I was curious so I watched it.  I admit to liking some pretty lame movies.  I don’t expect my entertainment to always be highbrow or anything.  And overall, for what it was, this movie wasn’t that bad.  It was silly and very cheesy but could have been enjoyable.  However, Edward (or rather the actor playing him) really ruined it for me.  Wow, his BAD BAD BAD overacting and weird pained looks and just bizarreness in how he played the character.  It was painful.  And also, the movie was pretty beautiful in parts (enough to make me really homesick for the West Coast), but I’m unclear on the decision not to have shot it on the Olympic Peninsula, where it takes place.  I recognized a lot of the PNW locations they used (mostly in Oregon and south central Washington).  They were gorgeous locations, but they didn’t look like Forks.  Perhaps the choice was made because there isn’t much picturesque about Forks.  Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of good memories tied to Forks and the surrounding Reservation and forest land.  Just, you know, it doesn’t look anything like central Washington or Oregon.  And yes, it was a cheesy movie, but aside from Edward’s bad acting, what really pulled me out of it was not at all feeling  like where they filmed it looked right.  Like it was green and grey and wet in all the right ways, but it wasn’t the coast.  It lacked salt air or something. I suspect I’m a minority of viewers who would have such a problem.

I’m actually quite cheerful and pleased with my day, even though I suspect this post comes over all rantypants and insane.

Hi!  What did you all do with your Saturday?


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fantasy wardrobe, fantasy weather, lots of whining

I’ve just started watching Lie to Me.  It’s good so far.  I like crime procedurals and geeky things like the science around reading facial expressions. So far though, what I’m most impressed with is the wardrobe.  Who ever is dressing the women on this show is doing a spectacular job. The two dresses Dr. Foster wears in the pilot are fantastic. The grey sheath is flattering and simple but it the details on the neck line construction are beautiful.  The second dress has some amazing pleats down the front.  Sadly I can’t find a picture of it.  I’d love to try and reconstruct it.    Everything she wears is perfect.  The dress at the wedding.  The long coat and boots at the fire station.

Torres always looks perfectly professional and yet interesting and comfortable.  Even Dr. Lightman’s secretary has gorgeous clothes perfectly suited to her figure and her position.  Love her ruffly cardigan in the second episode and her cute plaid dress in the third ep.

The clothes on this show are so great that they make me almost wish that I worked in an office so that I could dress like these women.

Of course it’s so cold here that I can’t sew.  My sewing room is the coldest room in the house.  Sure I could drag the space heater in there or something, but I don’t know if it will keep my hands warm enough to do the work I need to do.  Really this whole Arctic blast thing or whatever it is is awful.  The current -2°F (windchill) is unbearable.  And yes, I know it’s colder in the NE or whatever, but I don’t live in the northeast.  I live in Tennessee, in a house with no insulation that could use at least a lot more weather stripping.  The forecast tells me I just need to make through until Sunday and temps will go back to normal.  But 3 days of temps not even hitting 30°F as high with windchills around 4°F is pretty awful even if I only have to be outside for a few minutes at a time.  Plus today’s gross wet snow is going to be an ice nightmare should I decide to venture out.

While I’m thinking about cold and clothes, I got this sweater over the holidays (thanks, mom!) and I love it so much I’m seriously considering getting the blue one too (the one I have is sort of muddled brown/deep purple), of course by the time it was shipped to me it would be warm again outside.   Still, soft!  Cozy!  Cute!  I want to wear it all the time.  And I guess, given the current temps, I’ll have that opportunity.

Today’s picture I took at Mt. Rainier in the summer of ’05.  Green!  So green!  Not like winter at all.


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Let’s get this party started quickly

Libelle and I saw Avatar last night.  It was gorgeous and entirely worth the 3-D experience and price for the visuals. The story lacks, it’s your standard Hero’s Journey with added male-dominated society and offensive Noble Savage (or do I mean Romantic Primativism?) notes.  And yet it was very moving and enjoyable.

Ranking of winter movies I’ve seen, in order of story quality (by my own personal not described standards):
1. The Fantastic Mr. Fox
2. Up in the Air
3. Sherlock Holmes
4. Avatar

Ranking of winter movies I’ve seen, in order of emotional effect on me:
1. Up in the Air
2. Avatar
3. The Fantastic Mr. Fox
4. Sherlock Holmes

When I got home last night I wrote out this long post about the new year and my resolutions. Of course I left it on on open Notepad doc, didn’t save it and closed my computer and now it’s gone gone gone.  You’d think after years of computer use I wouldn’t continuously do things like this.  (It’s also possible that somewhere between when I took the Nyquil last night and when I actually went to bed that I typed over it.)  I’ll try and recreate it here.

Taking as page from a friend of mine (thanks, SH!), I’d like to go into this new decade and say that I am not a writer, not a project manager, a librarian, a waitress or a web developer.  I do not want to tie my identity to my work or to my projects and ventures. I simply want to be and do.  By which I mean I’d like to continue to create and plan and work until I land on what I will be seriously committing myself to for the forseeable future.  So I can be identified, for the sake of clarity as a sewist, or a reviewer, or a waitress, but I will let go of self identification as any of these things and simply do the work I need to get done.

I have in the coming year, approximately 26,000 hours of projects I’d like to complete about about 3,000 hours of time to devote to to those projects.  I am going to have to plan and pick and choose my projects carefully if I want to get anything done at all.  By eliminating self identification I’m hoping to make this process easier. That is to say, if I don’t primarily identify as a writer then I’m not saying to myself, “Well as a writer I must prioritize all writing projects and sideline sewing projects.”

I’m not 100% sure I’m explaining this well.  It might be too abstract, too much my own internal thought process, for public consumption, but I felt the need to put it here for reference in the future.  Overall, I guess my problem is that my focus is so wide that I feel scattered and am not managing to finish individual projects.  I know I need to narrow my focus and buckle down. Rather than say “I’m sewist, I will complete sewing projects.” I am going to let go of what I am and list my individual projects and focus on ones that I can reasonably complete and finish those, rather than tie myself up in the idea of the larger projects.  Hmm, I might be getting more vague the longer I type.  I wonder how often things make perfect sense in my head and I’m still not able to translate them into written words.  Is this a fault of language and communication or have I simply not clarified to myself well enough what my ideas are?  I can say for sure that the lost post I started writing last night was more clear and succinct that what I’ve ended up with here today.

Also I have been trying to include a picture with every post I make here, just for added interest.  This year I am going to try and include a picture I took with every post.  It won’t necessarrily be related to the post, nor have been taken recently.  I just realized I have hundred of pictures on file that I rarely look at and don’t do anything with, so I’ll try and share them here.  Today’s picture was taken in my backyard in Feb 2007.  It isn’t snowy here now, but it’s damned cold and this picture reminds me of how bleak winter is in Tennessee.


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Everyone rejoice it’s the SOLSTICE!

Because I am on vacation and also not inclined to do work I’ve already done, I will simply re-post last year’s post:

Today in the Northern Hemisphere we round the corner on darkness.  It is the Hibernal solstice when the sun is near its greatest distance from the equatorial plane, standing still as it were.

Today Marduk tamed the monsters of chaos and for one more year we are safe as we move back into the light.

Today we light candles and keep them lit.  Though darkness is already on the run, we must continue to chase it away so spring can come faster.

Today the Oak King is apparently dead, his branches bare and cold.  We thought the Holly King had won, as he remained green,  but long live the Oak King as he returns to rule us into Midsummer!  Go, hang the holly, let it catch bad spirits on it’s tiny horns, protecting us in the months of darkness when the border with the shadowlands is permeable.

Today is the Saturnalia where we eat and dance and decorate the evergreens with red berries.  We will reverse all our roles, switch with our opposites and see the world from the other side, through other eyes.

Today and for the days to come, find joy in each other, celebrate, kiss beneath the mistletoe, feast in the light of candles.  Celebrate the darkness and the joy we have as  it washes away.  Tonight we breathe and meditate on our lives.  We breathe out the things we want gone, we breathe in our wishes for the coming year.  Tomorrow life begins again.


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Thinky thoughts

I am freaking exhausted.  Staying up until 4 am pretending to be a cool rock chick will do that, I guess. Fun night, better day (despite the hangover) showing the PNW boys Nashberg.

Fall still seems to be raining it’s way in.  I’ve gotten pretty used to Indian summers here. I guess it’s still possible.  It’s just been so overwhelmingly grey and insanely wet for the last week.  The air tastes like despair.  I have been here, in the sun, for so long now that apparently it takes only a week of grey for SAD to set in.  Luckily a good day of bright Southern sunlight can knock it out.  Now if only the sun would come out.

Libelle and I went shopping yesterday and I got an amazing wool coat, Italian, with the tags still on at the new Goodwill for $15.  I am smitten with it. It’s purple, but not too purple.  I like autumn all right, though I lament the loss of summer.  The coat is so wonderful that I think I might actually make it through winter.  I will try to take pictures tomorrow.

I lost my evening reading random personal blogs that Google Reader recommended me.  Usually it recs me sewing blogs or something clearly related to other blogs I read (like music or local news) but I got these two random ones.  One a girl who seems lonely and sad, but maybe doesn’t realize how pathetic she comes across (lots of writing about the boyfriend she misses, even though they broke up a year ago and she hasn’t spoken to him in seven months, ugh, so sad).  And another is a sort of hipstery dude in Brooklyn, but he posts kind of interesting art, and these hilarious (possibly unintentionally so) one line movie reviews, so I might follow him for a while.

Then I was thinking about how these blogs are nothing but weird windows into people’s lives so I went back and read my own entries from the last three Septembers.  And I guess since this blog is sort of about nothing, it is also a weird little window into my life.  I was reminded that I get really homesick every September, so it is excellent that I am going out to visit this week (omg, I need to pack).  And there’s odd little entries like this one that make my life seem interesting.  I guess my life is interesting.

I was contemplating some meme where you put all your past addresses into Google Earth and post the pictures of them, but then it seemed oddly morbid. Still, here is the house I grew up in.  It is part of what makes me interesting.  This pictures makes me happy.  Maybe it is because it seems so sunny.

The Placebo version of this song was on the premiere of Vampire Diaries (which so far doesn’t suck) and reminded me of how much I love it.  I have probably listened to it six times tonight.  It makes me feel lonely and happy at the same time.  This video is clearly dated though still incredibly lovely.

This live performance is also dated, but the emotion in it is fantastic.

I am covered in mosquito bites from walking around Spring Hill cemetery this morning.  I hate the word “upcycle.”  I am tired and achy.  I should be in bed.  Instead I am scrunched up on the love seat eating a sandwich consists of wheat bread (the cheap, crappy kind that is like brown white bread), tartar sauce (better than mayo on sandwiches) and havarti.  It is kind of trashy and incredibly delicious.


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What the storm brings

cupcake joy!

Amid today’s crazy booming thunderstorms I made cupcakes.  Rainbow cupcakes with cloud frosting! Hooray!!!

First we mix the batter:

like easter

Which comes out looking more like something for dyeing Easter eggs, than something you’d want to eat.  In fact they don’t look much more edible after they’ve been baked:

tasty?

Obviously what we need to solve this problem is cream cheese frosting.  Lots and lots of cream cheese frosting:

clouds of joy

And the the most important part, eating:

taste the rainbow!


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stiches, grapes, cakes and frogs

010

The black dress is finished.  I put the pictures up on Flickr a couple days ago, but I forgot to post here.  I’m very happy with how it fits and how comfortable it is.  I’d like to make another in a print.  I’m thinking something like this:

lemons!
Maybe it’s too much?  Or maybe I just don’t like that black background.  I wish I could find something like it with a brown or muted blue background.  I think two of that dress, basically in black, would be too much.  The lovely burgundy muslin is probably unwearable for me.  I swear I preshrunk the fabric, but after I washed it it’s about four inches shorter.  Still a great dress, I just need to give it to someone shorter than me (unlikely) or someone who is comfortable wearing things shorter than I  wear them (likely).  So maybe I could just make a second dress in a color?  Though I really like the idea of a pattern.  Hmmmm.  I like the idea of a border print too, but those seem to be hard to come by.

My Colorado Rebecca (as distinguished from my other Rebeccas) has a new blog about her adventures with wine.  No, no, not in a drunken shenanigans kind of way.  More of a ‘follow along as I learn about this’ kind of way.  She’s at Adventures of a Wine Noob.  Go check her out.

For the last two days my hair has looked fantastic.  This is because I haven’t been out of the house or seen anyone.  Tomorrow it will surely go back to frizzy madness before it’s time to go to work.

I am recovering okay from the dentist stuff.  I had a rough morning.  And an afternoon trip back to the dentist to get a tiny bit more patching up.  An evening with  painkillers on the couch watching old standbys has helped a lot.  My chin hurts.  I won’t be surprised if it comes up bruised.  My gums are bruised and my lips.  My teeth don’t hurt so much any more.  Am certainly on the mend.  I kind of want to go run around tomorrow (the couch gets old after a while), but I will refrain so I can be good for work tomorrow night and healthy for the weekend.  So instead of errands and work, my choices for tomorrow are watching the most recent Bond movie or catching up on Mad Men (I haven’t even watched season 2 yet, ack!  3 is about to start).

I’ve posted before about the rainbow cupcakes.  Every time I think about making this it’s usually too late at night to get the ingredients I’d need.  Some day though, there will be rainbow cupcakes.  And now I have a new obsession: cake pops.    (Also go here and scroll down and see all the many delightfully decorated cake pops.)

Libelle just went outside to scare away the very loud frog that was on the porch.  Or maybe it was a bird.  Mostly likely a frog. Or some sort of alien hybrid frogbird.  In any case it was loud and annoying and seems to be gone now.  Oh, wait, I spoke too soon.  Stupid rain.  Stupid frogs!!  You stay in the gully.  Don’t come on the porch!


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the weather outside is weather

We had a super warm spring in Tennessee. And so far a hot, but decently wet summer. At least until the last week or so when it has blissfully cooled off. Apparently all of this is very bad for the tomatoes. So last year it was too dry and now we’ve got hot and wet and that isn’t good either?  I’m selfishly sad because Tennessee has some of the best tomatoes I’ve ever eaten.  I don’t want a no tomato summer. And what will happen at the tomato festival if there are no tomatoes?    It’s too tragic to even dwell on.

I have complained before that on the whole Nashville seems to be at least ten years behind the rest of the country in technology.  It’s not that hard to figure out, people.  A bad website isn’t less expensive than a good one.  AUGH!!  This rant brought to you another bad website that doesn’t work.  A sewing school I’d like to take classes at has a site.  You can read about the classes, the school and the teacher.  The schedule link is hosed.  The ‘contact us/directions/address’ link is completely broken.  I can not call or email them.  I can not get a schedule.  All I can do is see that they offer the class I want.  Brilliant.

Also I can’t help but wonder if this societal habit of reading the news over our morning coffee has made us all more unhappy than we otherwise would be.  I started my day with great news (my cousin had a baby!  Mama and baby both doing fine despite some complications!) and then I read the news and now I am grumpy again.

I did have marionberry jam on my toast this morning.  It was delicious, even if my grandpa did’t make it.

The cooler weather remains in Tennessee.  I have to say, it’s fantastic.  Maybe to day I will wear the dress I finished sewing yesterday to celebrate.  Hmm, I should take pictures of it too.  And with that, I’m off, out in to the world.


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a place of dreams and memories

It very rainy in Nashville today.  I went to sleep last night to the sound of the rain just starting to fall.  It was very comforting.  I realize now that most of the rain we’ve had recently has been lound, crazy storms, so this just plain old rain seems very calming.

I woke up this morning thinking one of the players in my dream was splashing in the bath, but really it was cars on the street outside running through puddles.  (And my dreams were of people I haven’t seen in 20 years–the brain is a strange place.)

I would love to have a cushioned window seat to read in today.  A window seat filled with plants, and looking out on to a green and grey landscape.  A window seat like the one on the first floor landing in the house I grew up in.  Hmm, today feels like a “house I grew up in” kind of day.  Which is to say I’d like to be reading Harriet the Spy in that window seat or making complicated papercrafts for some childhood game of imagination.

Instead I will sort some stuff for a small project, and go to the Goodwill and the library.  I will sautee vegetables and quinoa for lunch and drink lots of water.  I wil try and squeeze some yoga in before work and call it all a good day.


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seemingly unconnected

Hot.  Just roughly ten days of over 95°F and night time low temps of 79°F.  Daytime heat index has been over 100°F.  I’m not complaining exactly, especially since it’s spposed to break tonight.  At least for a few days.  I’m looking forward to that.  But it’s the kind fo heat that wears you down and I’ve already had so much going on, all the kind of stuff that wears your soul down and the heat just is making things worse, you know?

Also, PNW people, I know when I lived out west I said that poeple here didn’t understand that when it was hot in the PNW it was worse because weren’t used to it and no one had AC.  I take it back.  Sereiously.  It’s hotter here, even with AC, and harder to bear.  I am saying this, only because I am here.  If I was there and it was hot like this, I’d probably go back to my original opinion. 🙂  I reserve the right to change my mind as often as I like.

And, I’ve said before, the weather in this part of the country still baffles me.  I understand Seattle weather, how it lies between the mountains, how the clouds catch, why it rains, where the wind comes from, etc.  In Tennessee things just don’t happen in way that seems normal to me.  Cloud cover and night time don’t cool tempratures down.  The hottest part of the day is at the wrong time and somewhat variable.  Temps can drop, like they are right now, at 4 pm, on a clear and sunny day, for no reason other than a different weather system is coming in, unhindered by mountains and unchanged by oceans.  I mean, I guess I understand it, it just feels so alien to me.

—

“Nonsense.  Name a shrub after me.  Something prickly and hard to eradicate.”

*SIGH*  Oh Jack and Stephen, I love you so much.

So, uh, Im sitting here, reading some pretty hard science fiction and simultaneously watching Master and Commander.  And suddenly I’m wishing the future was even more now.  Where are my full text searchable databases of all the literature in the world?  I have an impulsive desire to go look a specific line in the third book of O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series (which is listed in some Amazon entries as “Aubrey/Maturin” HAHAHAHAHAHAHA) when I realize, oh, I don’t have any of those books here.  And it’s too late on Sunday afternoon for me to go to the library.  I suppose I could find an open Border’s books or something and look it up there, but that would mean putting on pants and brushing my hair.  Too much effort.  And in the other book I’m currently reading the tech allows almost anything to be searchable.  And so here I am wishing for full text searchable databases of all literature.

When I was in college people acted like librarians would soon be an extinct thing of the past.  Presumably because we’d all have these imaginary databases.  I said, no in my lifetime.  Tragically, it looks like I was right.  Come on, technology, catch up!!

—

Normalcy begins tomorrow.  I’ve been a wreck and I have no real desire to talk about why.  I’ve been wavering in pattern of taking a day to try and equalize and recover myself, starting to regroup the next day and then either I do something to fuck up or some outside force interfers and I stumble and try again to take a day to recover myself and the cycle begins again, lather, rinse, repeat.  Can’t go on forever and I’ve been seeing land on the horizon for a while.  Land fall is tomorrow and so the rolling, tide-like cycle can end.  Sorry for the nautical metaphors.  The hazards of the combination of the book I’m reading and the movie I’m watching right now.

Wednesday is the next of the big dental apointments.  And while th end is in sight, it’s still pretty far away.  I reserve the right to still have an emotional meltdown after each apointment.  I’ll probably come out of all of this needing therapy just to go into a dentist’s office again.  Or maybe I’ll take my mom’s advice and take valium before the appointments.  Not to be all drama queen or anything but the whole dental episode is still damn upsetting.  I am very glad to have friends around.  Everyone’s been very good to me and hopefully will continue to be even as I am prickly and unpleasent.

And all that said, I would give a lot, a whole lot to spend five days or a week alone at the beach when this is all over.

—

Crackjack Sister gets here tomorrow.  I can recuperate and be touristy and half-way vacation at the same time.  Having family here is the best because I never have to explain how I feel or why I’d do something a certain way.  No, that’s not explaining it right. Suffice to say, I’m looking forward to relaxing with my sister.  Sometimes there are Monday’s to look forward too.


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mostly just weirdness

Tim Burton is remaking Alice in Wonderland?   HOORAY!!

I can’t remember who I got the link from over the weekend (Wm. Gibson, maybe? Seems like his sort of thing), but check out abandoned places.   (The site is a little funky to navigate at first.) I need to make notes of things like this.  Like if I won the lottery I could just tour weird abandoned places.  That would be very interesting and surely take you all over the world.

This week I really need to get it together to make one of these light boxes.

I really want a decent, West Coast style burrito for lunch.  Alas.  Maybe I’ll get tortilla swhen I go out.  Grump grump grump.  If I go out.  It’s really damn hot this week.