Lame NaBloPoMo Post

The food around here is incredible.

Yesterday we ate at a barbeque place called "The Pig."  Whoa it was good!  I got a little video but I don't have time to get it together for posting today.  Alex made dinner last night - Thai - and it was wicked good.  Olivia made a pear and grape pie but we were too full to have any last night.

Olivia and I had pie for lunch.

Tonight for dinner Pete and I met up with his band-mates.  They're starting off a tour tonight here in Carrboro.  We went to probably the best Indian place I've ever been to, Vimala's Curry Blossom Café.  Yow!  The food is beautifully cooked with local ingredients.  It's so fresh tasting and not the least bit heavy or greasy.  Very good pre-rocking food.  Not that I'm doing any rocking except in the audience.

I'm going back home tomorrow so I should have more time to write better blog posts - at least until I go to California to be with Mom for Thanksgiving.

Carrboro, Part One

Howdy Everybody!  I'm in sunny Carrboro, North Carolina.  Now please don't go to my house and rob me.  Thanks.

We're staying with our friends, Alex and Olivia.  They are wonderful people and amazing hosts.  Any minute Alex will come home for lunch so I wanted to just check in and do a quick post.  Hopefully I'll have some photos or video to post later.

And of course I have to catch up on my word count for NaNoWriMo.  I'm not too far behind I think.  I'm supposed to make it to at least 16,670 by the end of the day.  Fingers crossed!

Sensitive In The Head

I've been having trouble with my reading lately.  It started this summer.  With all that was going on I became a little sensitive about what I wanted in my  head.  The only thing I could bring myself to read was The Lord of The Rings trilogy.

It's fun to read things over again after a number of years has passed.  You see things you hadn't seen before.  Your perceptions of characters and events change because of new experiences you've had since the last time you read that work.

In the case of LOTR sometimes the language was a bit contrived for me.  I was also able to identify the moment I fell in love with Aragorn back when I was twelve (or however old I was when I first read the book).  He ruined me for life, that one.

Anyway, one of my favorite things about those books is the "perseverance in the face of impossibility" message.  You could also call it the "just keep slogging" message.

Come to think of it, maybe a lot of things in those books ruined me for life...

Anyway, it's been a tough time and reading the old familiar stuff about Frodo and Sam and Gandalf etc. was consoling.  Re-reading and re-enforcing the values that I took out into the world was encouraging.

This spring I kept hearing a lot about Neil Gaiman's "American Gods."  When my friend Jim put it on  his list of books to read over the summer that pushed me over the edge and I decided to read it too.

In a way it was a good choice.  I enjoyed the book.  It's a good story and the world the book describes is an interesting place to be.  It's a dangerous and unstable world but there are consolations in it too.  I get the feeling that Gaiman is a kind and compassionate person.  It's nice to see inside the head of a compassionate person.  Maybe that's what I've been looking for in the fiction reading I'd like to be doing?

Anyway, after I read "American Gods" I haven't been able to find other things I want to read.  I've tried. I started "The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz, Stieg Larsson's "The Girl Who Played With Fire," and "The Thousand Autumns Of Jacob De Zoet," by David Mitchell.  I keep trying to plug through them but I keep putting them down.  The only thing I've really enjoyed reading has been, as I mentioned before, Stephen King's "On Writing."

I suppose this is just a phase that will clear up after a few months go by.  Maybe I should just watch movies or something - break myself in to uncomfortable ideas that way.  Maybe I should just keep plugging away at the books I've started.  I mean, it took me quite a while to get into "One Hundred Years of Solitude," by Gabriel Garcia Marquez but once I was there I was hooked.  I should read that one again too, come to think of it.

I'll put it off some more for now though.  I don't think it's really worth worrying about.  I'll be back to reading one day.

SCTV

Pete and I have been watching a lot of SCTV lately.  The routine has been make dinner together then eat while watching a couple of SCTV episodes on my laptop.  Sometimes we have a fire in the fireplace too.  Then we hit the hay.

We came up with the idea that this has had an influence on the pleasant dreams we've been having lately.  We tested the theory out last night.

The results were inconclusive.  I couldn't remember any of my dreams.  Also, Fay woke me up at around four in the morning.  It was sleeting like you wouldn't believe - just pounding against the windows and the metal roof.  I only drowsed till around six after that.

Here's some SCTV for you.  Keep an eye out for Juul Haalmeyer, leader of the Juul Haalmeyer Dancers in this clip.  He's the tall one with the very dark hair.  I love that guy.  I joined his fan club on Facebook!

A Dream

I've been having pleasant dreams lately.

Last night I dreamed that I was walking around a city with a colorful past.  There were a lot of cool old movie theaters and buildings with interesting architectural features.  Then somehow I ended up riding around in a van with a bunch of easy-going fun people.  I don't know who they were but we were all having a good time on a  starry summer night.  One of them turned out to be John Cusack.

We ended up at a tiny diner he knew and hung out there until sunrise when he started up the griddle and began to make breakfast.  He made sausage and Cap'n Crunch.  He was also good company.

Doc Martens

I am the proud owner of my first pair of Doc Martens.

I know, someone in my age bracket should have worn out at least three pairs by now.  The thing is, back in the late 80s, early 90s EVERYBODY had them.  I can be a bit contrary.  If everybody has something then I don't want it.

Now it's 2010 and most people aren't thinking much about them.  I wasn't either until I spotted this pair on one of my shoe trolling expeditions on endless.com this past spring.  I had to have them.

By now I've worn them enough to know how frigging comfortable they are.  I LOVE THEM!!!!  So naturally I bought myself another pair:

They fit a little differently than the pink ones but they're still comfortable.  I'm breaking them in.  Or else I'm breaking in my feet.

I feel lucky that I finally found these at my age.  Since we moved to Cambridge we've been walking much farther far more frequently.  My feet can't take the pounding they used to when I was younger.  If I wear flats with no padding or support my feet ache the next day.  (Heels are heels and don't seem to hurt more than they used to.  I love heels but you have to pay if you want to wear them.  Still, I don't wear heels to walk three miles to The Plough.  If I want to wear heels somewhere like that I'll carry them in a bag and put them on when I get there)  I'm way too vain to wear sneakers (ew)  These are perfect.

So now I'm hooked.  Look at all the cute ones they have now:

I'd love a pair of these.  Maybe the black with white dots?  I don't know...

Oooh, lacy heels!

Maybe I like the purple ones better?  I wonder if they're as comfy as the flat boots?

If they had had these in 1989 I would have got them.  Everybody else had black.

They have a Hello Kitty line.  I'm not biting though.

And then there are these:

Fortunately for my bank account (and complete lack of closet space) I can't decide.  So I'm going to be reasonable and not buy more.  For now.  Except that I did buy the blue metallic mary janes.  But really, I'm done now.  For now. Until I buy the pink mary janes.

Ladies' Undergarments, Mine Specifically

Maybe it's a bad idea to write about underwear in an otherwise unsexy blog.  Not that I intend to be sexy at all.  It's just that I think I'll be cursed with pornbot spam now just for using the word "underwear."

Here goes though:  it would seem that Victoria's Secret has cornered the market on women's cotton underwear.

I prefer to wear cotton for air-flow purposes.  It just keeps everything in better condition.  Back when Filene's was still in business they used to carry a really cute women's underwear line called St. Eve.  Number one, they were cotton, number two, they had great colors and prints (yes, I like colors and prints on my underwear) number three, they were cut well and number one-half, they were comfortable (good sized leg holes and not instant-wedgie-machines)

It must have been about eleven years ago when I went on my last underwear buying binge.  I remember because I remember being at the dog park with my friend Jean and telling her about the great underwear I'd bought at Filene's.  There was some deal like three pairs for nine bucks or something.  They were all so cute I stocked up.

It's so exciting when you find great underwear that sometimes you just have to share.  Like now.

Anyway, the elastic on my eleven year old underwear has ceased to function.  At the end of the day I keep finding my underpants down around my ankles and I have to throw them out.  Goodbye pink leopard print pair!  Farewell cute one's with the beach picnic patterns like a smiling crab!  Adieu white pair with the appliquéd flower and bee!  Sniff!

All my go-to underwear in the wastebasket and me left with the scratchy nylon lace ones that are sexy looking, sure, but you can't wear them every day.

So I've been checking out all the places where I thought I'd find cute cotton underwear.  Costco has cotton but they're the giant old lady kind.  I'd rather not wear underwear than wear a dumpy pair that shows over the top of my pants.  The department stores had masses and masses of cute (ish) cheap-o nylon junk - the kind that catches on the dry skin on your hands when you touch them.

I even went to Bloomingdale's.  Our Bloomingdale's is all hoity-toity and expensive and the saleswomen have terrible attitudes and yet they never have anything I'd remotely want to own.  I go there maybe once a year to see if they still suck.  I went there as a last resort.  It too was a sea of nylon.  They did have cotton underwear but the cheapest was Hanro at $35 a pair!  NO FRIGGING WAY!

Thank heaven I remembered that there's a Victoria's Secret in that mall.  They had a huge table loaded with cute cotton underwear.  Something like six different non-thong styles (thong=instant-wedgie-machine for me. If thongs work for you they had cotton thongs too.) and dozens of colors and prints including glitter patterns, five pairs for $25.  Thank you.  I just looked at a few labels and some of them are made with 20% organic fibers from Burkina Faso.

Needless to say I stocked up.  Eleven years from now I will undoubtedly be facing the same problem again.  Maybe by then there will be an even better underwear.

A Little Late

I woke up the morning of October first and this is what it was doing outside:

Honest to God, these photos were taken with my point and shoot and no filter at all.  The air was red.  

I forgot to set the camera's flash to "off" which turned out to be a good thing.  Those white dots you see are rain drops that the flash caught.  When I tried to take a picture without the flash the camera overcompensated for the lack of light and the photos weren't as accurate a depiction as these were.

I'd been meaning to post these shots for quite a while.  You might have noticed, though, that I haven't been taking much time to post lately.  Be prepared to see some old garden shots in the next coming weeks.  Filler!

Happy Autumn

Have I mentioned before that Autumn is my absolute favorite time of year?  Well it is!  Autumn is beautiful in every way.  I love the dramatic contrasts of colors.  Not just the colors of the leaves but the leaves against the dark trunks of trees or against the sky.  I also love how when the wind blows the air fills with drifting bits of color - you can see a golden volume of air.  Autumn is beautiful rain or shine.  

Autumns starts and ends early in Vermont.  The trees around our hose have mostly lost their leaves by now but there are still some plants in the garden that are putting on a show.

Good color combo here.  Nice textures too.

Here's another look at the floaty, feathery grass seed heads.  So Zsa Zsa!

 The fothergilla is looking bright.

Then there are the oakleaf hydrangeas.  I couldn't decide which photo I liked better so I used both. 

 I love how peony foliage looks in the fall.

Finally, a rather luxurious weed.

So healthy!

Happy Autumn to you!

Just A Thing

Okay, I hereby promise not to blog exclusively about NaNoWriMo this month.

But for now I will say that yesterday's efforts seemed impossibly useless.

After what I did today, however, I might just be able to make something of them.

Two big days of novel writing experience: one crap day, one good day.  Now I know it's going to work!

Idiot.

Doesn't matter.  It's just a thing I'm doing.  Maybe it'll suck, maybe it'll be okay.  Doesn't matter.  Just a thing I'm doing for fun.

First Of November Blather

November should be interesting - for me at least.  I'm supposed to start writing a novel today.  Yee!  I'm nervous.

For the past week and a half I've been thinking "can I start yet?"  Today I can and I have no idea what to write!  I think might have been afraid of that and wanted to get a jump on it.  You know, give myself more time to write the nothing I can think of.  Doofus.

It's so much easier to blog.

Somebody's going to write a novel in tweets someday.  Maybe they're at it right now.

Enough of this verbal meandering.  I should really save it for the 50,000 words I'm supposed to crank out by the end of the month.

Eat Me

Okay, now you guys are going to know how nuts I am: I don't care if I get eaten.*

After I'm dead I really don't care what happens to my body.  If someone wants to eat me I'm fine with that. Just for God's sake make sure I'm prepared properly!

I've had a couple of meals in my life where I've thought, "you know, if someone was going to eat me I'd want it to be this way."  I actually told one of the chefs that if I was going to be cooked after I died I wanted him to do it.  I think I weirded him out.  Do you know any chefs?  It's not easy to weird them out.

Tonight Pete and I went to the Highland Kitchen.  One of the things we ordered was the Pig and Pickle plate.  I believe that the crispy confit changed my life.  To me they looked more like deep fried pancetta - thick chips of bacony pork, crispy as all get-out.  Smoky, salty, rich but not greasy or overwhelming.  Holy cow!  To me that's respect: cooked pig perfected.

If someone wants to eat me after I die that's fine with me, as long as I'm FRIGGIN' DELICIOUS!

*I am not so weird that I want to be eaten alive or that I would choose to be killed for food.  I'm sure that many of you (perhaps all three of you) who read this blog feel similarly when you think about it.  Once you're dead you're probably not going to care about anything at all.  Also, there are plenty of weirder things about me than this.