It's Like This

Nouvelle France

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:11:28 GMT

Reading Witold Rybczynski's City Life, as he contrasts the varying styles of Spanish, British, and French townbuilding in N America, I suddenly realize that the popular conception of the Louisiana Purchase is always that of a vast tract of land--territory--an expanded frontier, a giant piece of the Manifest Destiny jigsaw puzzle. Its French settlements (and there must have been some; St Louis, say) are ignored. We don't gloss over just the Indian presence; we are equal opportunity rewriters of history.

No More *****

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:30:00 GMT

I want to be very clear about this: I do not want to hear any more about anyone's kinks and fetishes. I could give examples, but that kind of defeats the purpose.

Likewise excrement. If it comes out of the body, I don't want to hear about it. Not yours, not your dog's, not your child's.

For the love of tundra, when did it become necessary to ASK for people not to discuss ****?

Reading

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:38:12 GMT

I'm doing my Hugo reading. Ballots are due Friday. In the short story category, Kij Johnson's "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss" could absolutely be a This American Life radio piece. Seriously! Just imagine a snippet of music between each of her numbered sections, and Ira Glass saying "Act Two. Bathtub surprise." Meanwhile, Ted Chiang rocks. But you knew that.

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The Oregonian newspaper, having divested itself of nearly all content, is raising the price of a newsstand copy to $1.00. Yeah, good luck with that.

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Books read, 2009.

60. Toothpaste Millionaire by Jean Merrill, the author of The Pushcart War. Didactic in intent ("prepared by the Bank Street College of Education") but not in attitude.

61. The Secret of Scent: Adventures in Perfume and the Science of Smell by Luca Turin. Interesting, but I preferred the book about him, Emperor of Scent--easier to read and has a lot more to say. In this one, fun to see just how far I could follow his chemistry explanations.

62. Ultimate Fitness: The Quest for Truth About Exercise and Health by Gina Kolata. Science writer for the New York Times, has a good book on the 1918 pandemic. This one takes a sort of Mythbusters approach to various truisms of the fitness industry. That maximum-heart-rate formula? Based on seven data points, i.e. pulled out of someone's ass. The Fatburning Zone? Similarly bogus. She really takes apart studies to see how they were conducted and what they can legitimately claim to demonstrate. For a sample, see this interview on medicinenet.com.

63. Bag of Bones by Stephen King. He's just not for me.

64. W.E.B Du Bois, by Tonya Bolden, in the young adult biography series "Up Close". I knew his name but nothing about him. Born immediately after the Civil War, he lived long enough to be embroiled in the nastiness of the McCarthy blacklist. What I may remember longest about this book is that the author never referred to anyone as "slave". She referred to people who "had been held in slavery", or other reasonable and accurate locutions. Only once did the phrasing seem just unusual enough to catch my conscious attention, and then I looked back through the early chapters. And then I thought about why she might have done that, what difference it makes in my own mental picture of the people described. And she's right. To say someone "is a slave" gives the situation a certain touch of validation, of implied inherentness, that "they are living enslaved" does not.

65. Theatres of Portland by Gary Lacher and Steve Stone. One of those local-history books with a brown photo on the cover you see in museum gift shops--Arcadia Publishing has put out literally thousands of them. This one's hot off the press and we went to a book release event at the Hollywood, with a screening of the 1957 The Smallest Show on Earth. I've been in Portland since 1978, more than long enough to remember many of the rebuilt or entirely demolished movie theaters pictured here. He even talks about how the earliest multiplexes are relics now.

66. Mousetraps by Pat Schmatz. YA fiction. I think it topples over into being too educational for its own good, what with taking on bullying AND the gay uncles AND the gay football player AND white privilege AND girls' best-friend dynamics AND the kid who wants to blow up the school. Man, put like that, it's a wonder it succeeds as well as it did!

Worldcon airfare: #^€£%^

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 03:39:18 GMT

Sat down after dinner to finalize flight decisions for trip to Montreal in August. Rude surprise: in the last few days, prices have gone fron $400-and-change to $683-and-up. I don't like this game.

The Search for Spock's Sweater

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:18:49 GMT

I succeeded in contacting someone who worked on the movie, who was glad to poke about a bit on my behalf. (Very cool!) Final answer:

It turns out that it was made in the workroom, and they make only one, so it is one of a kind. The fabric is a woven material that was found and purchased in a shop in New York; it is not knitted, but has a knitted look. It was then backed with thin neoprene to give it some body to make it appear and handle more like a real sweater.

I might still knit something "in the style of", but I won't kick myself anymore for not being able to figure out the stitch.

Previously on....

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 00:09:45 GMT

My coffee yogurt post got more response from the peanut gallery than anything else in recent memory. vgqn's suggestion of instant espresso has the most promise: Medagli d'Oro brand dissolves beautifully in cold yogurt. We just have to calibrate quantities of coffee & sugar... and get a jar newer than 2007.

We looked into the Greek Gods non-fat yogurt, but it failed on price. You will recall that the original mandate was to have coffee yogurt (a) cheaper and (b) involving less packaging than the current True Yog, Dannon's 6 oz. lowfat coffee. We aren't interested in curdling our own from scratch; David has some faint yearnings in that direction but apparently it's something he "wants to have done" rather than "wants to do". The yard-sale yogurt maker just gathered dust for a couple of years before being tossed as clutter.

The Search for Spock's Sweater has some promising leads; I'll let you know if anything comes of it.

Have been taking half-dose of Effexor for a week now with no notable withdrawal effects, yay!

Also began supplementing with 1000 IU/day of Vitamin D3. I swear I am already less brain-fogged. When I saw my doctor about the anti-depressant issues and he ordered some blood tests, I asked him to include a look at Vitamin D levels. Don't have the results yet. Thanks to deedop and mkhobson for raising the question.

wild_patience asked for more about our health insurance.

We have two different plans. Between the sleep apnea, the need for antidepressant meds, and a BMI over 30, private insurers in Oregon won't touch me. And we had a letter from the group insurer under David's final employer plan (Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas) saying "Don't let the door hit y'all on the way out" when his COBRA benefits ended.

Oregon has an insurance-of-last-resort system, called OMIP. I qualified for it on medical grounds, and because of that letter, also on "portability" grounds (good because cheaper premiums). Except -- when I applied to OMIP, they said "Go away, you don't qualify for a portability policy, because Blue Cross Blue Shield of Oregon has to accept you as an in-house transfer." The really ironic thing here was that BSBC/O administers the OMIP plan... so my re-application went right back to the same address. Good grief. But that's all sorted.

Meanwhile, David has got a low premium, high deductible plan from "US Health Group". On those infrequent occasions that he needs the doctor, he'll pay more out of pocket than I will. He doesn't have the ongoing health issues that I do; he primarily needed something that would be a safety net in case of major catastrophe. The silver lining to this plan is that it qualifies him to have an HSA, a Health Savings Account.

The money you put into an HSA (there is an annual cap) is deducted from your federally-taxable income, boom. And then it's there in the account, growing as an investment depending on how you set it up, and there for you and your spouse to spend on basically any kind of medical expense. It rolls over from year to year, and when you hit 59.5 or 65 or something, you can spend it on non-medical stuff without penalty. I found that we could in fact fund it from David's IRA, turning "can't touch yet" money into "spendable now" money, which is useful. Having retired so early, we're top-heavy with "can't touch yet" money.

That's all for now!

Books Read, 2009

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 22:53:37 GMT

54. The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals that Protect us from Violence by Gavin de Becker. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Note that he is not advocating that one go around afraid all the time, in fact explicitly the opposite. People strung out on fear & worry are concentrating on possibilities and imaginary outcomes rather than seeing the true, real-world situation around them; therefore they are not in a position to react usefully when there's actually cause. He's very practical, talking for instance about when and why restraining orders can just be fuel for the fire & ignite the violence they supposedly help protect against. Readable, and fascinating. I kept reading bits of it to David.

55. Pike Place Market: 100 Years from Sasquatch Books. A small book. Lovely photographs and some interesting history. They link the decline that led to the Market almost being demolished in the 1970s to the internment of Japanese farmers and vendors during the 1940s.

56. Dark Sleeper and 57. House in the High Wood, by Jeffrey Barlough. I was reading Strange Cargo, and liking it, when I discovered it was book 3 of 3, and that I actually had the other two already. Perhaps I needn't have gone back to "the beginning"; Sleeper and High Wood didn't seem to have anything to do with each other besides being set in the same world. Sort of Dickens-lite meets Cthulhu-lite.

58. Upgrade Your Life by Gina Trapani, founding editor of Lifehacker.com. Tips and tricks, mostly techno-related, for making life go smoother. Right now what it's done for me is add a few xeroxed pages to my "Action wanted" pile, for further investigation. I do want to use her suggestion on keeping the email inbox clear, Real Soon Now.

59. Victory of Eagles by Naomi Novik. Book 5, I think, in the adventures of Temeraire and his Captain. I love the way she presents Temeraire's naive, out-of-the-mouths-of-carnivorous-babes viewpoint. He is often puzzled by humans' inability to see such obvious truths as "Treasure is Good."

Current shelf inches of To-Be-Read: 153.

Knitting Spock's Sweater: an appeal

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 21:23:42 GMT

In the new movie, young Spock wears a sweater in one scene. This has sparked some hot & heavy discussions over on Ravelry.com, let me tell you. (Above and beyond the hot & heavy discussions sparked by Z. Quinto, period.) Fiber content, yarn weight, construction, whether or not Mom probably made it for him-- and what the hell is that stitch, anyhow?

There are definite horizontal and vertical lines to it. No diagonals, nothing offset from one row to the next--it's not seed stitch, or moss stitch, for instance. It's ribbed; you can clearly see this in the way the light catches his shoulders as he moves. But I would swear that the "in" columns look otherwise identical to the "out" columns, and how is that even possible?

I've read forum threads and searched through stitch dictionaries, even done a couple of swatches. Maybe we're all wrong and it's actually woven. I think we need to go to the horse's mouth.

These are the names of the people in the Costume and Wardrobe Department, according to the IMDb. If none of them made the sweater, one of them knows who did! So. Are any of them your second cousin, college roommate, best friend from grade school? Let's get the power of social networking onto this!

Deborah Ambrosino, Carrie Arakaki, Myron Baker, Phillip Boutte Jr., Stacy Caballero, Jessica Carpenter, Steve Constancio, Dan Crawley, Valefor De Ambershay, Lisa A. Doyle, Adrienne Greshock, Stacia Lang, Linda Matthewsk, Jessica Elizabeth Mauricio, Mustapha Mimis, Melissa Montague, Andrew Nelson, Hilary Niederer, Shelli Nishino, Grace Pyke, Leticia Sandoval, Paul Sinnott, Leslie Sungail, Brenda M. Ware

Results! See June 15 post.

Weekly weigh-in

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 23:39:29 GMT

Last week: 227.6
This week: 224.2
change: -3.4

Woo-hoo! Total of 17 lbs down, in 15 weeks. That's respectable, and sustainable. At this rate I'll be at my goal of 175 next April or May.

Biggest change I've made is portion control. That, and reaching for something other than buttered toast when peckish.

"Hey! Who forgot their Jumbotron?"

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 06:55:52 GMT

A post in the Denvention 3 livejournal community links to photos of Lost & Found items from the con. Clever.

That dreaded To Do List

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 17:45:13 GMT

Read Gina Trapani's book ~~Lifehacker~~ [oops] Upgrade Your Life this week. Apropos of To Do lists, she emphasized the distinction between Projects and Tasks. Projects are multi-faceted and sometimes nebulous ("clean the garage"), while Tasks are specific, targeted, and achievable, and of course the latter are what belong on the List.

The new piece that caught my attention was where she said it should be short--twenty items, max.

I've tried having the Big List of Doom posted on the wall. We all know how well that works. I've tried identifying "just 3 key things I'll do today", whereupon my inner child tantrums and says "No! Not gonna!" while the inner adult says "three whole things? that's pathetic. Besides, you should be doing those other three instead."

Maybe the middle ground will help. I still have my big DoList.doc, but I've prioritized, reformatted the margins for just 20 items per page, and printed just page one. It's a good list.

What's your system?

Random neurons firing

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 01:47:44 GMT

I had some blood drawn today. Two words: student phlebotomist.
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Listening to the news really does become more fun if you yell "Zombie Apocalypse!" whenever they say "these hard economic times" or the equivalent.
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Retired people: doing our part (in the battle against the zombies) by staying the hell out of the job market.
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Yes, I want to make a dessert involving strawberries, gelatin, and yogurt. No, it is not going to have a base of crushed Kix for ghu's sake.
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I've discovered Japanese online room-escape games. Ohhhh dear.

Anti-depressants

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:03:43 GMT

I'm doing research prior to an appointment with my doctor tomorrow. Among other things, I want to make a change to my anti-depressant meds. Went to Effexor about a year ago because Prozac didn't seem to be cutting it, but (1) the Effexor may be contributing to high blood pressure and (2) it's not doing its primary job, anyway. Most of all, (3) after how NASTY NASTY NASTY the effects were during my involuntary blizzard-induced cold-turkey withdrawal last December, I want to not be taking this stuff any more!! Out of my body, off my shelves, not sinking its claws ever deeper.

But poking around to look at alternatives, I gotta wonder: are Effexor and Paxil that much worse than everything else when it comes to SSRI or SNRI discontinuation effects?

Or are they ALL that bad, and Effexor and Paxil only prominent because prescribed more?

I also want to talk to him about seeing somebody with more targeted expertise in mental health meds. He's a good GP, but this isn't his field. I don't even know what flavor of professional I should be dealing with. Psychiatrist?

Fun with my sweetie

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 06:25:29 GMT

Our evenings typically involve each of us staring at glowing screens in separate rooms--David writing, or cat-waxing online which looks just like work frim the outside, while I surf too or knit & warch TV. "I'd like to do more stuff together sez David.

"What did we do before computers & Internet?". Then I remember--tho I met him 25 yrs ago, he had a Macintosh already. For us there is no "before computers", no "before the Net".

Tonight we sat sidebyside at the same screen and played a couple of locked-room puzzles from neutralxe.net. (Exact link left as an exercise for the reader bcs I'm on my phone here, no cut/paste.) Fun being a team.

Tomorrow we have a date to see a 3D-photography exhibit at the Ore. Hist. Society, lunch downtown and hit the farmers' market.

The Unsweater, or Why There's a Bowl of Milk by My Knitting Basket

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 05:43:25 GMT

I'm knitting myself a sweater. The genesis of it was February 2008, when I took Karen Alfke's "Unpatterns" class. A hundred miles from home, I realized I had left behind the carefully packed bag with ALL my knitting tools and ALL my homework and ALL the yarn for my various classes. I pulled over at the next yarn shop and restocked with essentials for the weekend, including a sweater's worth of purple Dalegarn Heilo. And some navy blue for trim. This becomes important later.

Signing up for this year's classes, I said "Well I can hardly justify taking another class from the fabulous Ms Alfke when I haven't even acted on last year's yet! Damn!" So I started the purple sweater.

Five times.

I ripped that sucker back to nothingness five times before I could make it past my hips. The decorative cable was the wrong cable. The cable was the right cable, but I was doing it wrong. I joined the stitches correctly in an untwisted circle, knit for half an inch (by 50 inches around), and THEN managed to twist it. The cable was wrong again.

When it came time to do a little shaping at the sides and thus became necessary to know exactly where those points were, I found that I had (a) sixty stitches too many on the needle and (b) not even remotely sixty stitches worth of extra circumference. It took two days of swearing to find out that my meticulously measured sample gauge (knit flat) differs by 20% from my gauge when knitting in the round. Rip. Rip. Rip.

(Knitters call this part "frogging".)

There's just the one cabled braid, up the center front. Otherwise it's plain stockinette. I got bored with the stockingette after about 20,000 stitches and decided to have a subtly textured yoke, offset by a couple of rows of the navy blue. That's also going to end up around the cuffs and hem, eventually. I took care that the horizontal line will not fall squarely (roundly?) at my nipples. It's just an inch or two up from the bottom of the armholes.

The back yoke went smoothly. The front yoke seemed to involve a lot more ripping back & re-knitting of botched rows, where the mindlessly simple texture had gotten out of synch with itself. Eventually I had done the front yoke, on both sides of the neckline, and gotten fronts/backs/lefts/rights all the same length. Graft shoulder seams. (Ignore odd ridge; it's on the inside and who cares.) Add simple two-row trim in navy blue. Try on sweater-so-far.

It fits like a charm, and it doesn't want to be a V neck.

As I mentioned the other day, I let it stew for a couple of days before I sat down to unpick the seam (tricky, since the whole point of grafting is that it's exactly like any other row. OK, well, then it doesn't matter which one I undo, right?)

Rippit. Rippit.

The front yoke and neckline got redone during a four-hour Grey's Anatomy marathon. I totally didn't expect that season finale twist, did you? But looking back at the tape, yep, it was him all along! And it's so karmically right that that was Izzy's wedding dress. Even if I don't get the Alex thing.

What?

Oh. The purple sweater. I've picked up 140 stitches around the left armhole, ready to start the sleeve. David helped me measure how long the sleeve needs to be from where the yoke fabric leaves off, and now that I have the # of stitches I can do the math for how to decrease my way down to the cuff.

But I'm sitting here staring at a blue stripe that goes straight across the body and intersects the sleeve stitches at a right angle. I can't continue that stripe on the sleeves. I need to have that stripe on the sleeves. AAAARHG!

bedtime now. magic solution overnight?

Daisy/Duck

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:44:35 GMT

Sometimes while poking around at imdb I love just looking at the names of characters a person has portrayed over the years. Consider these two women:

A) Mrs Horvath, Mrs. Cermark, Washroom Attendant, Mama Fina, Rose, Edna Vogeler, Mrs. Kransdorf, Mrs. Waldman, Resko's Mother, Louisa Pavilic, Mrs. Schwartz, Aunt Clara, Princess Zolita, Sister Teresa, Mrs. Emanuel, Sra. Rosales, Mrs. Bjornsen

B) Lucille, Lola, Gini, Mame, Helen Faye, Babs, Lulu, Madge, Mrs. Akerman, Marnie, Millie, Telephone operator, Blanche, Miss Valentine, Dolly Jameson, Flossie, Lola LaVerne, Starlet, Pearl, Lotus, Coralee, Blonde, Nina Lasalle

Princess Zolita notwithstanding, it's clear which of these two would have been cast as The Hardworking Landlady.

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In other news, e_bourne has yet another roundup of cool archeology stuff. I clicked through for the "Eight scripts we still can't read", and through again to a long article about Mayan glyphs. Fascinating stuff. I had no idea those funky gargoyle-guys we used as clip art in Bento 18 were words!

And then there's the Central American script whose only surviving instances are on a 4-tonne basalt slab, and on a jade statuette of a man dressed like a duck.

"Dressed like a duck." Can you even say that and not smile?

Details

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 06:23:09 GMT

Just watched The Apartment with David (1960, directed and partly written by Billy Wilder; starring Jack Lemmon, Shirley Maclaine, Fred MacMurray). He's doing research for a story set around 1960, so we were both watching for background details--all the while wondering just which things were true to daily life, which exaggerated for comic or dramatic effect, which invented entirely by the wizards of Hollywood.

I was most fascinated by the contrasts that arise from the future arriving piecemeal: a modernish armchair and Picasso print in a very old-fashioned living room; foil-wrapped TV dinner heated in an oven still shaped like a woodstove; instant coffee(!), but to get hot water for it, he lights the burner with a match from the match safe on the wall above the stove.

Last night I saw about half of Mystic Pizza (1988, Julia Roberts with bigger hair than you can imagine). In the first hour there were at least four knit-worthy sweaters, maybe five. I'm wrestling with a pullover of my own right now, redoing the front neckline entirely. I had to let the bad one sit for a day before I could bring myself to rip it out, but it had to be done. If the neckline is wrong you'll hate the whole sweater every time you look in the mirror.

Not yet over that post-con cold. I had had hopes that today (Sunday) I could pretend to rejoin real life, but then I was awake until 4am. Pfui. I want my lungs back.

You can quote me on this

Sat, 30 May 2009 18:29:17 GMT

I, too, would hope and expect that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a (racially- and gender-privileged) white male who hasn’t lived that life.

I am saddened by the backpedaling, and by the perceived need for the backpedaling. She was right the first time.

post-con crud

Fri, 29 May 2009 03:25:32 GMT

Soooo sick. As sick as one can be without effluvia? Almost. I have never been so wiped by a cold before. (My understanding is that sneezing & sinus involvement rule out swine flu. Unless Occam has given up shaving and I have BOTH.)

Thanks for soup, sweetie.

Sun, 24 May 2009 05:24:18 GMT

Am finding myself rather better able to deal w/ people online than in person--midnight at Wiscon & I'm in room flipping thru email, Twitter & LJ instead of @ parties-- some of it is certainly the INSANE NOISE LEVEL in real life. Hmmm--and unlike IRL, never fumble for a word here or find that all my nouns have fled, typing. Just slower pace, or actual neurological significance?

Anyway. Came to say 2 things.

1) if you are at Wiscon and see me, please come say Hi. I know you're out there, but having very bad time reading faces/badges and correlating with assorted usernames. I'll be in a denim bustier, knitting sthg purple.

2) People in a position to listen to any re-broadcast tmw of this morning's Whad'ya Know may find a delightful surprise in the 4th half-hour. (tho I really loved the author guest near the beginning. What a cutie, in his work boots plaid flannel and shy smile)

Incidental touristing

Thu, 21 May 2009 18:14:54 GMT

We're driving from M'kee to Madison today. Detours other years have included the Dairy Shrine & Museum in Ft Atkinson, quite a hoot, and mounds, IIRC, at Aztalan State Park. This year we got lunches at Cafe Manna in Brookfield, had a picnic, and are going up towards Baraboo for the Forevertron.

I've seen LOTS of lilacs in bloom. Longenberger Gardens in the UW Arboretum are supposed to have an extensive display. Anybody want to join me for an expedition tmw morning? Find me at the readings tonight or respond here.

Milwaukee

Thu, 21 May 2009 04:14:48 GMT

[Having problems editing; please change final "that" to "than". Ta.]

Visited the Mitchell Domes w/ David's parents. The Yorkshire show garden looked like a Thomas Kincaide paintinge, impressionistic splotches of color. Have never seen hydrangea heads that large before. The Tropical and Desert domes were both studded with familiar words/unfamiliar shapes: carob, cocoa, kapok, creosote, agave, mahogany, banana, curare.

Lunch at the National Cafe, nice little place in a seedy nbhd under the freeway. Ahi tuna, sesame-crusted, in a sandwich w/wasabi mayo and fruit on the side. Sprecher's root beer made David jump up & down in his seat like a little kid. Waitress agreed w/me that there's really no detectable wasabi in the mayo. Midwest Bland strikes again?

James Cameron's movie Ghosts of the Abyss re a 2001 expedition to explore/film the Titanic site. We were too low in the IMAX theater and all the action was literally over my head. Ouch.

Lengua de res con salsa verde at Jalisco on E. North Street for dinner. No Midwest Bland here! A-hooa! Reviews of this place online had been very mixed but the tongue, the chicken fajitas, and the chicken soup all pleased us well. That dinner and the Desert dome, and talking w/ my sister about the Girl Scout trip to Guanajuato (impending or aborted, I don't know which) have got me yearning to return there myself. I so hope the girls get to make their trip. Cancelling is such paranoia; I think Washington State has had more swine flu that G'to State.

we know what's important

Tue, 19 May 2009 23:50:57 GMT

Time for a nice, quick dinner at MSP: big green salad, spicy moist walleye fillet. Such tasty fish names Walleye, scrod--I mean, doesn't the thought of biting into "steelhead" make your fillings ache?

During bursts of net access at gate and tarmac, I've been reading Ravelry threads about construction/stitches in Spock's sweater.

Weekly check-in

Mon, 18 May 2009 20:59:56 GMT

It would have been easy to skip WeightWatchers attendance this week; we leave for Wisconsin on Tuesday. It was tempting. This week included a Saturday so far off track that I just put down 50 points! And I've logged barely any activity at all.

So:
Last week: 231.0
This week: 228.4
change: -2.6

The relationship in any given week between behavior and results seems non-existent, in other words.

Overall trend is good. I've lost 13 lbs, average about 1 per week. Will just keep plugging.

Books read, 2009

Fri, 15 May 2009 01:38:39 GMT

51. Roel & zijn Beestenboel #7: Incognito, a Dutch comic by Gerrit de Jager. Roel runs a vegetarian restaurant adjacent to the TGV tracks. The cook is a chicken, the serving staff are cattle, and Bokkie is, well, trouble. I'm very fond of these.

52. Eight Women, Two Model Ts, and the American West by Joanne Wilke. The year was 1924, roads were paved if you were lucky, and Joanne's grandmother and great-aunt were dead set on seeing more of the world than just Iowa. They set out for Yosemite with six friends. The book tells that story, mixed with the author's own, in which suburban California was routine and Iowa farm summers brought adventure. There are digressions into the nature of memory and of story itself.

53. D is for Deadbeat by Sue Grafton. Don't see the appeal. On my list apparently because of a fleeting mention of knitting.