Early Girl - Wednesday 6/11/2008

There she is! Ain't she a hot tomato?


Here come her sisters!


They seem to be enjoying their spot in pots on the patio.


Cool Thing : Check out this Chris Ware animation that's on the This American Life website. Very cute story from a long-time married couple. I've had this happen with stories my siblings told about living in other houses before I was born.

I adore Ira Glass and the stories he and his crew bring to NPR every week. You can download podcasts or listen on your computer. I just donated to the podcast.

The story "Giant Pool of Money" explains the current mortgage crisis so well...

Saugus Swapmeet - Sunday 4/20/2008

This morning we went to The Saugus Speedway Swap Meet for the first time. I don't think anybody really swaps anything, but it's an interesting mix of old stuff and new stuff and there's even a live band over near the beer vendor.

I just liked the guy with the chain saw perusing the artwork.



Um.... Does anyone else find this stuff a little creepy?



A sweet looking little boy enjoying lunch with his mom and dad. We were having Jody Maroni sausage sandwiches at the next table and listening to the live music.



I've been appreciating the flowers outside so much this year, and wow, look what's going on at the Trader Joe's in Santa Clarita.


A detail. They almost don't look real!


Veggies we bought from the farm stands in the swap meet. Cleverly, they had bowls of Persian cucumbers, tomatoes and bell peppers set up for $2.oo a pop. Even the bundles of skinny asparagus were $2.00 each. The grapes were only $1.00 a pound.

This is $11.00 worth of vegetables. Way better than at the grocery!

It was very cool out this morning... only 48 degrees when we arrived. Hard to believe it was in the 90s around there on Friday!

Cool Thing: Our friend John Wainwright and his business were featured in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette today!

FPA - Wednesday 3/5/2008

That's Future Peaches of America. (Snapped on our way out for an evening hike.)

I don't know about you, but those futuristic organizations were big where and when I grew up. Future Farmers of America and Future Homemakers of America come to mind.

I just went to my high school's website, which has been newly revamped. Yay, it's about time!

I would just like to say that the newspaper went from the Courier to Cat Tracks when I was there, and I helped design the cat footprint logo that trailed across the original banner. I was editor in chief during the time when we switched from hand-mimeographing to being printed inside the (now, sadly defunct) Noble County American.

Boy, was Mr. Gagen, the editor of that paper a hero to me. He'd come down from working as a reporter in Chicago to run his own local paper, and I thought he did a great job of it.

I just went looking for a link to any archives. All I found were obituaries, including that of my father and my grandmother. I can't believe my dad was only 62. I mean, I can. But he's missed out on so much since 1990.

Okay. Anyway. It's spring and things are blooming. It's amazing where a photo of a blossom can take you.

Cool Thing: Yet another new recipe. This one for Chicken Breasts with Mushroom Cream Sauce from Eating Well rocks if you're able to get all the ingredients without too much trouble. I found fresh Shitake mushrooms for a reasonable price at the always amazing Trader Joe's.

Spinach Soup - Tuesday 3/4/2008

By the time I took this photo I was so hungry that I didn't check the clarity of the shot.

You get the idea, though. I tried a new recipe for Spinach Soup from Eating Well magazine. I didn't make the croûtons, but the soup is wonderful on its own. It's not too hard either to make or to find the ingredients for. It is good, however, if you have one of those immersible hand blenders, otherwise you have to transfer the soup to a regular blender.

Cool Thing: Hydra was right when he said this wonderful video of a kid's amazing basketball experience would appeal to the Indiana in me. I predict that you will like it. I further predict that if you grew up Hoosier it will actually bring tears to your eyes.

Cool Thing #2 : Bonus! When I sent the above video to The American, she responded with this little gem.

LOL! I have the greatest friends.

Miss Eartha Kitt - Sunday 2/24/2008

Rrrrrow, huh?

I bought this LP at the Round Up last weekend for seventy-five cents. Isn't that a great cover?

My turntable is packed up in the garage alongside the end-table sized speakers that went with it. I bought it right out of high school back in nineteen hundred and seventy-nine and it served me well.

I'm thinking I need to get one of those USB turntables so I can move the hundred or so LPs on my library shelves to mp3 files. There's some really good music in those sheaths that hasn't made it onto CD.

Cool Thing: A recent interview with Eartha Kitt on NPR entitled Still Sizzling.

What Goes Around - Friday 2/1/2008

I wrote first thing this morning, of course.

But one of my other projects today was to make postcards from some of my photographs. The photo of the cards didn't come out as well as the cards themselves.

I'm sending these to a big-time writer who has been kind enough to carry on a correspondence with me for a couple of years. I'm sure she does this for a lot of writers. She uses postcards, so I thought I'd make her some and put postage on them so she can continue her good work.



I would like to say in my defense that this peach/blueberry pie is only the third pie I've ever made. And that I don't think the thermostat on my oven is right, because I had to leave it in there for about 20 minutes longer than the recipe called for to get it browned at all.

But for Pete's sake, will some one help me with this whole sealing the crust issue? I made cute little scallops around the edge of the pie plate, but you can't tell it now. It sort of got pulled taut during baking. Any clues for me? Just leave a lot more when I trim the dough in the first place??

From sampling the filling that oozed out onto the aluminum foil (I have learned a thing or two around the kitchen after all), it's gonna be delish. The peaches are from our crop last summer, frozen lo these many months.

Cool Thing: My essay, "It Ain't Las Vegas" is now available online (without most of the photos, sadly) at Weber: The Contemporary West. Check out the other writers, too. It's a good journal!

Texas Rocks Acton - Tuesday 1/29/2008

I think I've made it clear that I like rocks.

I brought these back from Texas with me. The one one the left is from Joe and Jax's land...the place where I took a photo of the wall he'd built and the misty view. The one on the right is from the Guadalupe River near Jax's dad's river house. Clearly, it's been worn by the water.

Cool Thing: I found this link to the geology of the Canyon Lakes Gorge, which I showed a photo of a few days ago. The rock looks a lot like this stuff. Guess the weathering happened very quickly.

Soapbox: This is a new featurette where I'm going to randomly post about things I'm thinking about from time to time. George W. Bush's plan to send us each a rebate check is just an insulting bribe. I can't believe this works on people. And I would like some one to tell me just how much it costs to process and mail each of these $300.00 checks.

No Animals Were Hurt During the Destruction of this Bowl - Monday 1/14/2008

No humans, either.

Dang it! I use this bowl almost every day to heat up our pampered birds' dinner.



I blame Barnes & Noble Cafe and their fine, fine handling of Starbuck's coffees, which led me to imagine that the bittersweet cup from which I drank was merely a taste treat and not an invitation to Lost Weekendesque jitters.

This is what the B&N Cafe looks like, by the way, at 2 o'clock in the afternoon on a Monday in January. Quiet. Except for the distant sound of scratching brought on by the dry winter air.


Is this Espresso Number 1, Espresso Number 2, or Espresso Number 3?

I defy even the lovely Carol Merrill to tell the difference after three of these babies.

The Photo Idea Index resting on the table here turned out to be a really cool browse. When the strike's over maybe I'll come back and purchase it.

Cool Thing
Thanks to Braveheart for forwarding this link to a funny, funny blog entry over at List of the Day.

Jungle Tub - Saturday 12/01/2007

Decided that the plants had to be moved in off the front porch for the winter. It's been getting down to around 32 degrees at night.

About half of these are cuttings taken from Braveheart's yard. I lost a lot of plants last year because I didn't move fast enough and she gave me lots of starts.

Good thing I'm not much of a bath person. (And we have another deeper tub in the guest bathroom.)



Cool Thing: This amazing database of bird photographs and calls at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology! I just identified the beautiful song that's being sung outside my window this morning as that of a White Crowned Sparrow. (If you go, you can hear a sample for yourself.)

The Tee Shirt Project - Friday 11/30/2007

Tee shirt from the now-discontinued Art of the Wild workshop at Squaw Valley. What an amazing week that was. Very empowering workshops and panels, and I took a raft tour of the Truckee River with a geology prof from UC Davis for my field trip day.

I'm taking the advice of this show I used to watch on BBC America, where an organization specialist went to people's homes and helped them get rid of their clutter. It usually had to do with emotional attachments to stuff not because of the items themselves, but the memories they held.

So. Today I start taking photographs of my tee shirts so that I can keep the image and the memory in a little photo album instead of filling up my wardrobe. Some of them have the collars cut out of them (because they're more comfy for working out, not because they are actually from the eighties) or are stained and can't be donated. A few I'll keep, and some I'll give away.




From the first L.A. Times Festival of Books. I went to the first three. They didn't expect a big turnout the first year, but 50,000 people showed up. Was this the year I saw Charlton Heston read from Hemingway and the Bible on an outdoor stage with no reservation needed? Or maybe the next year. Whatever his politics and talents, that was a very interesting reading.



Yeah, I worked at the UCLA Engineering & Math Sciences library during the Northridge Quake. If there had been people in the stacks, there would have been deaths. When I finally went in to work a week later, we reshelved books that had fallen into the spaces between shelves three feet deep. Mostly bound journals. Very heavy.



I didn't realize that Wolf Lake was Noble County's oldest town till I saw this. This was the closest town to us when I grew up (still is to my Mom), about 5 miles away and about 150 people strong. My dad owned and operated a service station there with his brother. I won a dance contest at this festival in 1978. Boogie down!



I was working at UCLA's Rosenfeld Management Library when it moved from the old building to the new. We moved the rare books from Special Collections across campus on hand trucks. This was the last place I worked at UCLA. During most of my lunches I went to the pool in the Women's Gym nearby and swim. That and discovering the Fowler Museum next door are my two fondest memories of that job.

Writer's Strike Hits Big Boy - Thursday 11/8/2007

As you can see, it was a bit of a gloomy day in Toluca Lake yesterday. This is a side view of the Big Boy sign from across the street.

I walked in after a 2 1/2 week absence (the morning regulars hadn't seen me on Monday with Mom) and opened my laptop and got started.

Waiter D came by just before his shift started at 6:00 a.m. and said, with a smile in his eye, "You're writing? You're writing again?"

"Yep! Back at it." All proud of myself for finally showing up after so many days of not really concentrating on anything.

"What about the writer's strike? You'd better be careful!" he said, sliding a tray of glasses into its slot beneath the wait-station sink.

"Oh-- It's not that kind of writing. I don't write scripts. I'm not in the Guild."

"Still, watch it. There was a guy came in here yesterday asking how far our security cameras reach. He was from Universal. He had some kind of argument about the strike out there, and the other guy tried to strangle him!" D demonstrated two hands around an imaginary neck. "It's getting crazy already."

Wow. No kidding.

Later, on my way out, I stopped to talk with the 3 Musketeers who were curious whether I'd been laid off or what. They are two older guys who own a printing business and one younger guy who I found out today owns a gas station. They are more regular regulars than I, hardly ever missing a weekday.

The younger guy asked if I know a location scout.

"No, but I might be able to find one. Why?"

Turns out that a location scout asked about using his gas station as a location and asked what he'd want for compensation. I told him what I've heard from people whose houses have been used. That they usually get the amount per day of their monthly mortgage payment.

He seemed happy about that. I said that he should probably also take into consideration what it might cost him in lost business.

"So?" one of the older guys asked, "Is $5,000 enough for the inconvenience to your customers?"

"Are you kidding?" The other one said, talking to me now, "For $5,000 he'd stay there all night serving coffee and donuts!"

We also talked about the strike. The previously funny one said, "The way to end it? Dissolve the union."

"Oh no," I said, "I'm not with you on that. And what they're asking for..." All stuff you've heard me say here.

The two older guys have heavy Russian accents. Now I wish I'd told them that I'm practically a socialist. I'd have liked to have seen their reactions. I sure wouldn't want to work for them. They always seem to think their employees take advantage of them simply by asking for a paycheck, let alone vacations. I try to tell myself it's just blowhardiness.

While we were talking about the strike the 5 or 6 big burly men at the next table kept glancing over at us. Probably teamsters. Truck drivers who have a real moral dilemma at hand.

They don't want to cross picket lines, but have reportedly been told by the studios that they are free to strike, of course. But if they do, they will be replaced and if the new hires don't volunteer to leave after the strike, they won't be let go. Aha. Very nice.

Cool Thing: an unofficial, but very interesting WGA strike blog called United Hollywood, which has great tales of real-life experiences on the picket lines, etc.

Cool Thing #2!: you really should take a minute and thirty-one seconds to watch this funny strike video submitted to YouTube by Daily Show writer Rob Kutner.

[Thanks to The American for keeping me abreast of all the latest news, and passing along great links like the ones above.]

And Now for Something Completely Different

{Image from the Internet}

Cool Thing: We'll get back to our regularly scheduled parade of photographs soon. For now, check out this movie my friend Truly made for me. Click here and turn up the volume.

Fear and Perception - Monday 10/8/2007

The illustration above clarified my thinking about the gall bladder: it's green, it lurks, and you have to go in X-Files style and route it out. Afterwards--or maybe even during the surgery itself--you will be able to eat a cracker with a big lump of cheese on it.

All right!

For those of you outside the range of my whimper, this will be news.

I'm going to have my gall bladder removed on October 22nd. I have a 2 cm+ gall stone that periodically causes me pain and discomfort. I've been convinced, as the surgeon said last night in the pre-op consultation, that "The risks of not having this surgery are greater than the risks of having it."

Plus, I don't trust the state of health insurance in America. If I should leave or lose my job, this would be a pre-existing (read that: non-covered) procedure. As it is, it's a common and low-risk surgery.

Still, I'll be taking off work for the two weeks the surgeon recommends. My mom's coming out, so we can talk a lot and she can make sure I keep walking more every day, etc.

I feel a lot more confident about this after having the consult last night (with Hydra there for extra questions.) They also ran tests, most of which I have the results of already (kudos to the Internet and Kaiser's use of it), which identify me as in good health going into this. Better than in a crisis, which a gallstone can create.



Seriously, if you'd asked me yesterday morning, I would have described Dr. Z (the surgeon) as looking kind of like this guy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's ultra-creepy episode, "Hush," but with wispy hair and a fillet knife behind his back.



After seeing him last night, I realize that I would actually cast James Olson--remember him as the single guy with the key from Andromeda Strain (1971)?--as Dr. Z.

Much nicer.

Cool Thing: On a side note we watched a PBS show about California during World War II last night and I learned that Kaiser Permanente really started the concept of HMOs with the Kaiser Shipyards. When I looked up their history, I see that it's earliest incarnation was in Mojave, CA and that it treated workers on the Los Angeles Aquaduct that brings water from my beloved Owens Valley to L.A.

I've Had It - Sunday 10/7/2007

With this bag. It's too big, too unstructured, and the strap is too long.

What was I thinking when I bought it?

Probably only that I wanted a black bag big enough for my camera and my notebook. Sigh.

But here's a Cool Thing! It's a post called "How to Hide an Airplane Factory." You will like it if you a) have any interest in World War II or b) Are familiar with Burbank, CA or c) simply enjoy learning cool things you might not have known before.

Wall and Piece - Sunday 8/5/2007

Pages from Wall and Piece by Banksy.

I think I may have seen some of this guy's stenciled graffiti art in Paris. Whether it actually was or not, I liked it and the images here a lot. Especially the rats. I think there’s a place for creative graffiti in the world.

I used to work at The Blue Mountain Coffee Company in Fort Wayne, IN and the women’s bathroom was famous for its witty and artistic graffiti. They even did an article about it in the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette.

Anyway, the images are interspersed with snippets of commentary from Banksy about his experiences in creating street art (I could have read even more of that), and about the art scene, and about society in general.

The only thing that I really didn’t agree with was his painting on the sides of living animals. I didn’t see anything that said that he didn’t use regular spray paint on the cows and pigs he graffitied, and that just really doesn’t sit well with me. Especially the pigs, who have sensitive skin and not much hair to protect them.

Oh, and the stuff where he’s messing with someone else’s art…which I guess he does in a way that doesn’t permanently deface it.

But how interesting to see art that actually challenges you and makes you think.

I love this image [taken from the Internet], which is wrapped around the cover of the book in a way that doesn’t let you see the punch line. It caught my attention and drew me in. I sat with the book at Barnes & Noble for about 20 minutes last weekend and decided I needed to buy it and bring it home.

Cool Thing: He has a website!

Hot Night Cool Wine - Thursday 7/5/2007

Here's another idea for cooling down. Pinot Grigio with fresh rasperries and Griottines (morello cherries in kirsch).

I stepped out onto the porch to take the picture and quickly ducked back into the air conditioning. It got up to a hundred and eight in Acton today, and it was only sloooowly cooling down.

Cool Thing du Jour : This book, Food & Booze. It's a terrific collection of essays about--um--food and booze. With recipes!

[Image from the Internet]

Bookcrossing - Tuesday 7/3/2007

I've been a member of Bookcrossing for a few years, but every once in a while I actually free a few books. I'm going to drop these at Aroma Coffee & Tea later today.

It's a great concept. You mark books, register them, and release them into the wild. You hope that the person who picks them up leaves a comment about them. It's only happened to me once in the 27 releases.

Hope lives...

Cool Thing du Jour #1 : Bonny Doon Vineyard's website, where I went to find information about their terrific wine labels and was not disappointed. If you click on Learn Our Ways, and then Label Artists you'll get a nice look at their label art and the people behind it.

Cool Thing du Jour #2: The amazing art of Bascove, which I discovered because she's designed labels for the aforementioned Bonny Doon Vineyard. I love her subject matter and the way she treats it. It's reminscent of Diego Rivera and of some of the industrial art of the 1930s that I adore. Check out her whole portfolio if you go.

Art House - Monday 6/25/2007

Today I finally hung the painting Braveheart gave me a couple of weeks ago. I love that she suggested I might want to hang it outside. I think it looks very cool by the front door.

It's under the porch roof, out of the sun and rain. It makes me happy to see it there.

Cool Thing: Or maybe creepy thing. Checkout Melissadata's People Finder. I am not advocating that you pay for any of these records. I think a lot of them are duplicates and some are just wrong, based on looking myself up here.

There are no pictures of Pasadena - Saturday 6/23/2007

Because in deference to my back issues, I didn't carry my camera with me. So you'll have to settle for this photograph of the little notebook I used while exploring some coffee houses for a project I'm working on with Gia.

Had a great day. Walked and walked. Exchanged my medium point Waterman for a fine point at Vroman's Fine Writing and Gifts. Signed up for the Vroman's Gives Back program which applies to the book store as well. You get to pick which charity or organization they donate 1% of the amount of your purchase to. I chose KPCC. [Larry Mantle's AirTalk is some of my favorite NPR programming.]

Bought a couple of books next door at Vroman's Bookstore. This independent bookstore is well worth traveling to for a nice long browse. They also have wonderful author events, children's programs, stationary, gifts, etc. Picked up a copy of Suite Francaise.

Saw Paris Je T'aime at the Laemmle Playhouse 7. If you are in the throes of an infatuation with the City of Light, or if you like watching the short film programs on IFC or Sundance, you will probably like this collection of 20 short films set in Paris. Only a couple fell flat for me, and several were absolutely perfect.

Walked all the way down into the heart of Old Town for more coffee house recon and for creme brulee and espresso (Hydra had a mini cheesecake and coffee) at Aux Delices. Which was good. But honestly, not as good as the desserts you can get for about half the price at Porto's Bakery in Burbank or Glendale, where the atmosphere is frankly also superior.

Do we see a pattern emerging? Are Sundry and Hydra becoming Francophiles?

To this link-laden post, I will also add a Cool Thing. I come across a lot of cool stuff in my job and because I have cool friends. I'm going to start passing them along when it pleases me.

Cool Thing: Gia sent me this link to morphing artwork. Interesting coincidence since I'd just noticed that all the magazines in the rack labeled Men's Interests and all those in the racks marked Women's Interests featured photographs of woman. We are just so...fascinating.