The Endorsement

In anticipation of this year's elections, I "read" the audiobook version of Hillary Clinton's Living History during my travels. I already knew much of my politics aligned with Clinton, just as I knew they also pretty much aligned with Barack Obama's before I recently started reading his Audacity of Hope. What I found in reading Clinton's story, though, was a woman who still bristled at the letters "GOP". Although I had intended on voting for her, after reading all 592 pages (23 hours), I came away with more misgivings than assurances.

Comparatively within the first 100 pages of Audacity of Hope, I knew Obama had won me over. Take page 68:

I am obligated to try to see the world through George Bush's eyes, no matter how much I may disagree with him. That's what empathy does—it calls us all to task, the conservative and the liberal, the powerful and the powerless, the oppressed and the oppressor. We are all shaken out of our complacency. We are all forced beyond our limited vision. No one is exempt from the call to find common ground.

And take page 92-93:

...the process of making law in America compels us to entertain the possibility that we are not always right and to sometimes change our minds; it challenges us to examine our motives and our interests constantly, and suggests that both our individual and collective judgments are once legitimate and highly fallible.

And also page 97:

...I can't summarily dismiss those possessed of similar certainty today—the antiabortion activist who pickets my town hall meeting, or the animal rights activist who raids a laboratory—no matter how deeply I disagree with their views. I am robbed even of the certainty of uncertainty, for sometimes absolute truths may well be absolute.

Sure, I want a president that supports the same causes I do. But I also want a president that has examined the other sides of those causes and admits that his opponents have a valid point, he just chooses to disagree with them.

Last Wednesday I saw Obama at a rally in Phoenix (you can read about the first time I saw Obama and shook his hand here). To my right was a Black single mother; next to her was a Latina; next to her was a woman of Korean descent; next to her was an elderly couple; next to them was a trio of Latinas; and a few rows in front of me was a group of 20-something Muslim girls in their hijabs, waving their posters and posing excitedly for group shots for their point-and-shoot cameras. It was as if a cross-section of America had turned out. And if that's the following that Obama attracts, that's whom I want to throw my weight (and my vote) behind.

I'm no Oprah or Scarlett or Caroline. But for what it counts, I'm endorsing Barack Obama.

Secretly Famous

Last night I met up with Crystal at Changing Hands (better known as My Favorite Local Bookstore) to see Frank Warren (better known as The PostSecret Guy) at a stop on his book tour. He started his talk with an explanation of the PostSecret project, how it started, etc., and he used three or four postcards as samples explaining PostSecret. One he held up as an example of how the postcards are really works of art themselves. It looked faintly familiar, but I couldn't see it well from the back of the crowd (it was standing room-only). And then he read the secret. And I recognized it. And I nearly freaked out. It was the secret that belonged to one of my best friends. I desperately wanted to go up to Mr. Warren afterwards and ask to see the card in person, because by holding it, it would almost be like my friend were present there in that room. Unfortunately, I couldn't get through the crowds of people without making a complete idiot of myself. It may be strange, but I am proud to know that my friend's postcard is being shared with audiences around the country as a significant example of art and that the ironic secret s/he shared anonymously with a stranger is bringing chuckles to the people who hear it.

Sticking Around
For various reasons, I've decided to stay in Edinburgh for an extra day. The hostel was booked solid for tonight, so I have a new plan (inspiration brought to me by Dan). The new Harry Potter book comes out at midnight tonight, meaning that I probably won't even get a copy until 12:30 or 1 a.m. The first train back to London King's Cross leaves at 6:15 a.m. (boarding around 5:45). By the time I make it back to the hostel to collect my luggage, that leaves me about 5 to 5 and a half hours to chill in the train station, which should get me at least a third of the way into the book, depending on my supply of caffeine. Suh-weet.



This is Why I'm Out Here
My adventure in Edinburgh has confirmed why I'm doing this trip. I've had 5 days here on my first solo adventure, my first hostel adventure (in 4 years at least), my first new city adventure, my first figure-things-out / make-new-friends / try-new-foods adventure. The first day or so was uneventful, but then I got up my courage to actually talk to people in my 14-girl dorm room. And -- surprise, surprise -- I found them all to be delightful! It's utterly fantastic to enter a city knowing not a single soul, only to be pubbing a day later with what feels like a contingent from the U.N. My nights have been filled with conversations, drinks and stories shared amongst Canadians, Australians, Kiwis, Germans, Scots, Hong Kong(ers?), South Africans, Spaniards, Italians and the odd American here and there. This, my friends, is worth it.

Chuck Klosterman An' Erica
(Get it? It's like his Esquire column, "Chuck Klosterman's America.) Last night my favorite bookstore hosted Chuck Klosterman at a local bar to read from his recent book, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story (book purchase count within the past two weeks is now up to 7. I told you, just slap the lable on me and cart me off to biblioholics annonymous). He was funny and witty and quite insightful, and nothing I had imagined him to be. I mean, I'd known from his columns, articles and books that he was funny and witty and quite insightful, but I'd always imagined him as being a funny, witty, insightful, dark-haired, wisened-yet-hip 40-ish-year-old man. It's amazing what images our minds will conjure with no physical descriptors to predicate our imaginations.

Anyways. I asked him what he thought about people who had once championed a small band whom they then talk down once the band "makes it big". The whole, "Death Cab for Cutie's work was really good five years ago, but then the O.C. played their music and all the overemotional teeny-boppers who want to starve themselves to be like Mischa Barton started listening to Death Cab and now their music is only a shadow of what they were" mentality. He said that he used to hate those people, because it showed that it wasn't really the music that these people championed, but the experience of liking a band they could call their own. (Warning: the following statement is a paraphrase and probably an amalgamation of several quotable insights from the night and is influenced by the single Fat Tire I consumed during the evening.)

"But then I realized that's the whole point of music. It's not just the music or lyrics themselves, but the whole experience. We listen to a Wilco album, and we like to say we enjoy it because Jeff Tweedy is such a brilliant lyricist, but really we're fusing everything we've experienced with music and Wilco and just our entire lives with the moment we hear Yankee Hotel Foxtrot for the first time and all that combines to influence our experience of the album and causes us to identify with a song or album. It's like how in the 80s I loved metal rock and then Metallica came along and all of a sudden everyone loved Metallica, and you'd ask why they liked Metallica, and they'd say, 'Well, they wear jeans.' But what does wearing jeans have anything to do with the band's musical talents? Nothing really. It's the experience of Metallica that attracted people. And if people liked Metallica because of their jeans, who am I to say that's not valid? And if these people are looking to identify with a little-known band because it makes them feel like it's their 'own' band, and then the band makes it huge, that experience is taken away from them. And really, who am I to hate them because they feel robbed of their experice? I can say they're idiots because obviously the music itself doesn't mean shit to them, but the music isn't as important to people as the experience of the music. So yeah, that's what I think about that."

You have to imagine him saying all this in a slightly high-pitched male voice with a hint of a lisp while holding a plastic cup of water as he sort of dances/shifts his weight from left to right and moves his hands all around like my mom does when she talks on the phone. He was brilliant, really.

You know what else is brilliant? The book store owner announced that none other than Mr. Jonathan Safran Foer will be coming in the fall. AND David Sedaris. AND Barack Obama. Are you starting to see why I love this place?

I can check another lifetime goal off my list
I met Rick Reilly tonight. You may recall that Sports Illustrated's back page columnist is my favorite sports writer. He did a book talk and signing at Changing Hands (are we seeing a theme here?) and of course I was there with my cutest $4 Target shirt on (the man is newly divorced, you know). His talk (more like a stand-up schtick) covered everything from Charles Barkley's bald head to Lance Armstrong's lone nut, to the fact that Pistons fans write their hate mail in crayon "because that's all they have access to in the home." We also got him to promise to strip naked, bathe himself in tuna fish and jump in Shamu's tank, should the Arizona Cardinals make it to even one playoff game this season.

My mom was in front of me in line to have him sign her book, and when I stepped forward to hand him my book, she told him, "This is my daughter and she's grown up reading you. She's a writer, too!" Telling Rick Reilly that I was a writer was like telling Paul McCartney that I won a song-writing contest in third grade. I wanted to die. And then I felt about 13 years old for being embarrassed because of something my mother said. But I am NOT a writer! It may have been what pulled me into journalism, but writing is what nearly drove me out of journalism. (Writing for the blog is different...way different. I don't have to interview people or fact-chect — I mean, you all know that 74.6% of what you find on the Internet is untrue anyway, right?) I design. It's what I do, it's what I love and it's what kept me in journalism. I may not get a byline beside each page I lay out, and most people think of far-out illustrations when they see my business card calling me a "graphic designer," but I'm getting used to the fact that what I do is often misinterpreted. Just don't call me a writer.

Hello, my name is Erica and I’m a biblioholic
I have a problem. I can’t stop buying books. But that’s not the whole problem; the whole problem is that lately I have been buying or borrowing them faster than I can read them. I have bookmarks in no less than seven (SEVEN!) books right now. I’ve run out of proper bookmarks and have resorted to tearing off scraps of paper from notes, Google Maps directions and the phone number of a boy I really don’t want to call back. And last weekend I bought two more books. My car drove itself to Changing Hands Bookstore. I couldn’t stop it—I was just going to look!—but then I flipped open the back cover of a used hardback book, and I fell in love with Jonathan Safran Foer. I bought a book because of the author’s picture; I have stooped to a new low of patheticness. New, for your viewing pleasure:



But this book! This book is amazing. It may just pull me from my non-committal rut.

On Why My Grandfather Has More in Common with the Rapper Ice Cube Than One Might Think
While waiting for a friend to call so we could meet for lunch in Aggieville on Sunday, I was browsing the walls of books at the local used book store, the Dusty Bookshelf when a book titled Pappy: The Gentle Bear (A Coach Who Changed Football...And the Men Who Played It) practically socked me in the stomach. I knew of only one Pappy, and he coached my grandfather while on the Cal football team. Sure enough, there in the middle of the book is a picture of my grandfather with a group of fellow "Pappy's Boys" at the unveiling of the life-size statue of Pappy on the Berkeley campus. AND THEN, I started reading the opening passage:

Imagine a beautiful spring night in the East Bay hills. The lights of San Francisco twinkle in the distance. A gang of rambunctious former college football players gather at the quarterback's house for an evening of good food and raucous conversation...It doesn't make sense, rationally," said Dick Erickson who was hosting the party with his wife, Jan.

Look at that! My Mamu and Granddaddy are literary characters! And if you need help imagining that beautiful spring night, check out the pictures of my grandparents' home, which is on the market here (Click on the picture and you can see the view that shows the twinkling San Francisco lights). Not only is Grrr a literary character, he's a literary hero:

Cal had two very good, but very different quarterbacks in Dick Erickson and Bob Celeri. Erickson, nicknamed "Old Faithful" or "Money in the Bank" by the local writers, started most games because he was ice-cube cool under pressure and was unlikely to fumble snaps...Cal's coaches had supreme confidence in Erickson and believed he was the most underrated quarterback on the coast.

So see? Ice Cube and Grrr, they're like long-lost brothers.

A Rundown of More Highlights from the Weekend in Manhattan
+ The revelry that was St. Patrick's Day in Aggieville, where everyone was decked out in green...and purple, of course (and totally wasted at 10 a.m. before the 2-mile fun run and 10K not-so-fun run).
+ Panera!
+ Scene It, the Friends version, followed by a Friends marathon to figure out all the answers we missed.
+ Seeing Little Sterling, who had trully grown into the "Little Man" nickname I gave him at 10 months and had become Tall Sterling. (See one of my favorite Sterling stories here.)
+ Lunch with Tarin and dinner with Emilemilemili!
+ kU almost getting wiped off the map with a tornado.
+ Coffee in Lawrence with Ryan (creator of the "Everso Easy, Everso E" nickname that is the namesake of this blog) and Nick, thus inducing the biggest caffeine jolt I've experienced in a long time. I swear my arms twitched the whole ride home.
+ And of course, spending quality sibling time with Ally.

A grab-bag of random thoughts
Our neighborhood smells like burnt popcorn right now.

I am super-excited that Google Earth has now been launched for Macs. I am not excited that Jack the Mac is too old to support the beta-version.

My feet feel claustrophobic in shoes.

I think I'm stuck-up. Either that or introverted. I'm still trying to figure out which.

I watched a documentary about a transvestite seminarian for the Phoenix Film Festival this week. I'm now obsessed with trying to spot transvestites on the street.

I'll admit it, I award myself a heap of cool points for being a Phoenix Film Festival Viewing Committee member. (Is this a revealing factor of my stuck-uppityness?)

I can't figure out how to get the creepy old man next door at work to stop bringing me cookies and offering to buy me a pizza and "watch you work" when I stay late during deadline week. Maybe a restraining order would work.

Despite the many permutations my faith has gone through in the past decade or so, one thing remains: I just can't give up on God.

I really like the cute green sock cover I got for my iPod.

I feel a connection to Lynne Truss, author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves because in her introduction, she talks about picketing in front of a Leicester Square theater, protesting the absence of an apostrophe in the movie title, Two Weeks['] Notice, which was showing when I was in London. I imagine her standing just feet away from me outside the movie's premier, she with her grammatically correct placard, me with my camera, whose film I wasted while waiting for Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock to appear.

I really miss my dog. He's been frollicking with his "cousin" at my grandparents' in Berkeley for the past week.

There are four books that I've started but have yet to finish sitting on my bookshelf. Each still has a bookmark saving my place. I'm starting to run out of bookmarks.

I really would not like to be a punter on a football team. That looks like the most vulnerable position on the team.

Bobby Darrin's "Beyond the Sea" came on the radio this afternoon. I don't really know why, but this put me in a really good mood.

instant gratification
There are moments while I am enjoying a book, movie or song when it strikes me, this one sentence/scene/line is worth the entire book/movie/album. This author would deserve my $14 if the entire book had been one page with this scene printed on it. Or, that musician could forever be listed in my hall of fame because of those notes alone. Nearly every one of my favorite books/movies/songs has a moment like that. Here are a few that earned the distinction of Favorite in the past year or so.

books
• "I was born twice; first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974." Opening sentence of Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
• "Mr. Jeavons said that I liked maths because it was safe. He said I liked maths because it meant solving problems and these problems were difficult and interesting but there was always a straightforward answer at the end [...] maths wasn't like life because in life there are no straightforward answers at the end." Plus the rest of chapter 101 of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
• "'Well,' [Hassan] said, 'if I may ask, why did the man kill his wife? In fact, why did he ever have to feel sad to shed tears? Couldn't he have just smelled an onion?' ¶ [...] Taught by Hassan of all people. Hassan who couldn't read and had never written a single word in his entire life. A voice, cold and dark, suddenly whispered in my ear, What does he know, that illiterate Hazara? He'll never be anything but a cook. How dare he criticize you?" The end of chapter 4 of The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.
• "'You see, the prophecy does not mean you have to do anything! But the prophecy caused Lord Voldemort to mark you as his equal. ... In other words, you are free to choose your way, quite free to turn your back on the prophecy! But Voldemort continues to set store by the prophecy. He will continue to hunt you ... which makes it certain, really, that --' ¶'That one of us is going to end up killing the other,' said Harry." The end of chapter 23 of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling.
• "CREAM RINSE Cream rinse always gets stuck in the upper rim of my right ear. [...] i will be driving and glance at myself in the rearview mirror and spot white goo hanging out in there. I'm always like, Again! The cream rinse! What's up with this?! as I wipe it off." Page 81 of Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal.

movie scenes
• Before Sunrise When Celine and Jesse are in the listening booth at a record store and try to avoid making eye-contact with each other. It's all done in one shot and I don't know how they did it without cracking up.
• Saved! When Mary confronts a cross at a church right after she's found out she's pregnant; she curses God and you know that that moment is the first time she's ever said a swear word in her life. It is the moment she begins to really examine her faith for the first time, too.
• Après Vous The entire job interview scene, especially the part where Antoine tries to mime "lobster" for Louis to guess.
• Garden State The scene in Sam's bedroom where she tells Largeman to create a unique moment, which will be unique because no one in all of history will have ever done that precise thing in that precise place and no one ever will.
• Be Cool Toward the end of the movie, the moment where Andre 3000 sips tea out of a dainty teacup, raising it to his mouth with the aide of his handgun.

music
• "I was waiting for a cross-town train on the London Underground when it struck me
I've been waiting since birth to find a love that would look and sound like a movie"
Clark Gable by The Postal Service
• "I'll tap the break while you crack the window
The smell of smoke is making my lungs explode
The 51 is backed up and too slow
Let's tune out by turning on the radio"
Tune Out by The Format
• The two chords after "I thought you could read my mind"
Trusted by Ben Folds
• The way Jen Wood says "lure" in "You've got a lure I can't deny"
Nothing Better by The Postal Service (OK, so The Postal Service makes the list twice...gotta problem with that?)
• "When I awoke I was on the highway
Highway
Highway
Highway"
A Movie Script Ending by Death Cab for Cutie

--

Will someone please call the surgeon
Who can crack my ribs and repair this broken heart
I recently found out a crush from my past is getting married soon. This affects me more than you know and more than I would have ever expected.

if you thought the FHNGBCBC had faded away...
You'd better check again! We're back in action, folks. (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince spoilers abound, be forewarned.)

and now, the rest of the story™Paul Harvey
The weekend was wonderful -- completely free of 95+ temperatures, and full of reunions with good friends and family. It was weird to see my younger cousin, Damon, up there, taking his vows. He and I used to be really close, giggling in the back of the van on the way to family reunions, making jokes about how the Denver airport looked like an upside-down sow. And there he was, in front of the church, crying as he exchanged his purity ring for a wedding band while the minister led him and his new wife, Michele, in their vows. Some people may giggle at the sight of a young man tearing up at the thought of pure love, but I think our culture has forced men to put on a "tough guise" because we expect them all to Rambo-like "tough guys." That's so sad that we expect guys to close up against emotions like those Damon was experiencing.

At the reception, they held the "Money Dance," where you pay to have a spin around the dance floor to send the merry couple away with a financial boon; I danced with Damon and for a moment it felt like we were as close as we had once been as kids. Then he asked if I was close to doing this. "Doing what? Dancing?" I asked. "No, silly. Getting married. Are you ready for the man God has chosen for you?" And I felt a million years younger than him right then. "Oh no!" I said before catching myself.

I need to work on my cynicism. I'm very excited for my friends and family who have gotten married and engaged lately (God knows there are a ton of them this year), but when it come to myself and love, I have a hard time envisioning that it's anywhere near yet. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. All in good time. But it gets hard when people keep asking whether there's a man in my life and I keep on giving the same answer, "My dad is all the man I need right now." Not hard as in I'm discouraged, because I really don't feel like I'm anywhere near ready to have a serious relationship. But hard as in frustrating that it seems that other people think I need to be ready.

Whew. That got personal. Anyways...

ready for HP7
Finished Half-Blood Prince last night. I'm ready for Book 7 and looking forward to the discussion with the FHNGBCBC.

obligatory dateline post
PORTLAND, OR - It is my last day in Portland. Having come here for my cousin Damon's wedding, it was a great chance to kill three birds with one stone, you might say: we stayed with my mom's best friend Sarah and her son, Adam, whom I hadn't seen since our sophomore year of high school; and I got to spend an entire Saturday with Scott. This afternoon, Sarah is taking us on a tour of the wine country, and of course we'll be stopping by the vineyards to do some tasting. Mom's plan is for Sarah to "pour us onto the plane, and we'll be sober when we land!"

the book
Thanks to Dan's suggestion, I stood in a line that wrapped the circumference of an entire city block for an hour and a half at Powell's City of Books (the largest independently owned bookstore in the country) to purchase Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I promptly came home and fell asleep on page 16. Horrors! I'm half-way through it now, no spoiling it for me in the comments, folks!

thanks...
...for all your book suggestions! That was fun! I had forgotten about many of my favorite childhood books. Did anyone else love Cam Jansen, the girl detective who would say, "Click," and store a scene in her photographic memory? Or Harold and the Purple Crayon?

are you missing election season?
Then check out HottestUSSenator.com, set up by Elise and vote for - you got it - the U.S. senator you believe to be the hottest (not counting Barack Obama). I've been wondering if the winner has to be selected based on his/her current appearance. Because, certainly, 20-something John McCain beats out the competition:



speaking of hot...
Not only is it supposed to get up to 110º in the next few days, but yesterday our air conditioning went out...and it probably won't get fixed until Tuesday. Our house was 86º this morning before the afternoon heat wave hit.

help a sistah out
The Mizzou alum club here has "adopted" a school in the poorer district of Phoenix and is helping them build a library. I have been given the duty to spend the $500 grant we received on children's books. How awesome is that job? The library will be getting all the Harry Potter books, of course; and since much of the school is Hispanic, I'm going to try to find as many books related to their culture as I can. My request from you is this:

What was your favorite childhood author/book? What should I be sure to buy tomorrow?

blogless
I haven't been as regular with my blogging lately, and that's partly because I've taken to going on walks during lunch rather than sitting at my desk. The weather is perfect right now and I know it won't last long, so I eat my lunch while working, then tie on the grubby pair of sneakers I stash in a desk drawer and head to the park. I've gotten to know the park regulars by sight now. There are the young professionals who lunch at the picnic tables, the retired couple to play tennis, the two UPS drivers who rest in their trucks and talk between cabs, the children who chase each other on roller skates up the slope and down the slope, the older birdwatching couple - he with his Cardinals (football) cap on and each with their binoculars around their neck - who take the same walking path as I. With an hour at my disposal, I usually go for a half-hour walk and then find a sunny spot on a park bench and read for a half and hour.

There's a riding stable next to the park, and Thursday three young kids were resting their horses at the picnic table where the young professionals usually lunch. The eldest girl was probably around 16 and the two younger kids (a brother and sister?) were somewhere between 7 and 11 years old. And the horses, oh they were beautiful. The 16-year-old had her hair in pigtails and I longed to be able to go up to her and say, "Hello there. I almost wore pigtails today too. Mind if I pet your horse?" as if our similar hairstyle would have forged an equestrian kinship. Later, while I was on my walk, the two horses and their riders came galloping through the park. The older girl was riding bareback (bareback!) and the two young kids were sharing the saddle of the second horse. And for a moment as they passed me, I was the girl with the pigtails, galloping through the park on a sunny Arizona day.

Instead, I turned around, sought out a park bench, jumped into the waters of the Atlantic and emerged in London, circa 1990 as I opened White Theeth and started reading.

really very ordinary
About three weeks ago, my mom and I went to a book reading at a local bookstore. The program was called "Wine and Words," and for it, the store brought together three first-time authors to read from their memoirs while the group of us sipped wine and ate yummy finger foods. One of the authors was Amy Krouse Rosenthal, her book is titled, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, and it's fantastic.* The whole thing is alphabetical snippets of her life. Take, for example, BROTHER: "My brother, who grew up with three sisters, was I won't say how many years old when he finally realized that he didn't have to wrap the towel around his chest when he came out of the shower." Ha! The book is personal and personable. She lets you into her life in chunks, much like the way you get to know a friend. A friend doesn't divulge her life's secrets in narrative, but rather you learn about her in bits of conversation and asides. Rosenthal's style is really akin to blogging, and maybe that's why it is so comfortable to me. Each alphabetical excerpt is like a blog entry, an entire book of "10 things you didn't know about Amy Rosenthal."

Morning Edition interviewed Rosenthal today, and I felt I had to share her with others as well. Check out her Web site (linked to above and on the right) and then go get the book. Do it.

quiz show
I'm thinking about tearing a page out of Clark's blog and creating a quiz for my readers to answer. Look for than in a few weeks.

*Yes, I'm double-booked right now. If you don't know that reference, you need to read So Many Books, So Little Time.

christmas in california
I'm too lazy to upload all my Christmas pictures to Ofoto right now. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow or Saturday.

berkeley car game
Get two points for every Toyota Prius. One point for every Honda Civic Hybrid. Subtract 10 points from your opponent if you spot a Hummer.

Number of Priuses seen: lost count
Number of Hummers: one, on its way into San Francisco from the suburbs.

Reasons why Berkeley residents own Priuses:
+ Progressives (heart) the environment
+ Government incentives to help fight smog
+ Can't maneuver SUVs around the twisty streets
+ Neighbors would egg a military-inspired Hummer

more games
Match my answer with the question posed to me during the visit with the family.

1. "So, how's the editing job?"
2. "You don't believe everything that book [Jon Stewart's America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction] says, do you?"
3. "You grew up in Kansas. Tell us, why are Midwesterners so afraid of gays? We Californians got used to gays living together a long time ago."
4. "You like Harry Potter?"
5. "You know, this is a prime opportunity to say, 'You're not in Kansas anymore,' right?"
6. "How do you like the new job?"

A. groan
B. "Are you kidding me? I camped out for tickets to the first movie."
C. "Satire has a bit of truth, you know."
D. "I design. That is, I make the magazine look pretty."
E. "That's a very easy question with a very complicated answer varying on the day."
F. "You're preaching to the proverbial choir now."

books received as gifts this holiday season:
Longitudes and Attitudes by Thomas Friedman
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss
Pappy's Boys: the Rose Bowl Years* edited by Sports Illustrated's Ron Fimrite and produced by my grandfather

Plus reading rights to my mother's Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer, and my sister's Citizen Girl by the authors of The Nanny Diaries.

on the floor when i arrived home:
See no. three on Tim's blog (Dec. 29).

*Which, unfortunately, does not include this year

come one, come all
Wanna get in on the FHNGBCBC action? Let me know. Our first book is Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex. If you want to be part of the club, I'll extend you an invite. Or, feel free to read along and comment if you so desire.

bibliophiles, unite!
The Friendship Has No Geographic Boundaries Cyber Book Club begins! You read it there first.

blast from the past
Fellow Cyber Book Club Bloggers:

Sarah, Meh-gen and I celebrate Halloween at Kate, Myndi and Becca's last fall. 

signs, signs, everywhere there's signs
I started reading The DaVinci Code last night and couldn't get past the jacket cover book flaps (book cover jacket flaps? internal book jacket?). Every few lines, or so, there was a letter that seemed to have a printing error - the letters were not quite bold, but they were a slightly heavier weight. It bugged me. But then, I thought, "Maybe there's a hidden message!" (dun dun DUN!) and I realized that if there were any book that had a hidden message, it would have to be this book, the one about finding concealed patterns in DaVinci's paintings. So I jotted down the letters that bugged me. Holy sleuthing Nancy Drew, Batman! The "randomly" weighted letters created a coherent message:

Is there no help for the widows son

I'm only three chapters into the story so far, so I have no clue how that phrase might be connected to the story, but I was pretty pleased with my sleuthing skills. Has anyone heard about this hidden message?

It reminds me of my childhood (ah, to be young again) sitting at the dinner table in front of Salvadore Dali prints. We had (still have) two prints on our dinning room wall and my dinner table chair faced them. One was Persistence of Memory, the other, I can visualize, but its name I can't remember. This other painting was vertical and was of a large, abstract clock. There was something about the painting, though, that caught my eye; there seemed to be a part of the painting that looked like the letter "L". I was convinced that there must be a hidden letter in each of Dali's paintings. If you collected all his and located the hidden letters, you could rearrange them (maybe in order of their creation) and it would spell out directions to a hidden treasure. While in elementary school, I spent most of my dinners trying to find the hidden letter in Persistence of Memory. I'm still searching.

I might mention that I read a lot of Nancy Drew at that age. My first occupational ambition was to be a private detective. I even dyed my hair to try to become Nancy Drew. I turned out looking more like Bozo the Clown.

in honor of the globes
I saw a bunch of movies in about a two-week timespan during break. Some were in theaters, some were new releases, some were classics I finally got around to seeing and some were old favorites. The list:

Shanghai Knights
Mona Lisa Smile
Secretary
Murder by Death
Pink Panther
Trainspotting
Tootsie
Steel Magnolias
The Pianist
Seabiscuit
Bruce Almighty
Roman Holiday
An American in Paris
Old School
Pirates of the Carribean
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Big Fish
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
The Big Brawl
Bowling for Columbine

After watching the Golden Globes tonight, I was reminded how many movies I still need to see...and those are just the movies of 2003. Thank heavens for digital television and 24-hour movie chanels.

full disclosure
I'm not actually reading A Walk in the Woods. I've become an old woman; I'm listening to the book on tape. I've become a book-on-tape junkie. It started out this summer with a library card from the Daniel Boone Regional Library. The connection between my portable discman and my car's tape player went on the fritz and I was left with two options to keep me awake for the four-hour drive home: listen to the radio (if you thought radio stations in mid-Mo were sparse, try Kansas), or pop in a tape deck (my sparse collection -- if it could be found under some pile of dust in the basement back home -- includes MC Hammer; New Kids on the Block; Ice, Ice, Baby the single and the Lion King Soundtrack, and only then if they hadn't been sold in a grage sale eight years ago). I opted to pop in a tape deck, but to expand my mind while doing so. I've "read" a lot in the past eight months, from Molly Ivans, to Bob Woodward, to Lance Armstrong, to The Brothers Karamasov. Not to mention Bill Bryson. Lots of Bill Bryson.

I planned to continue my mind expansion this semester. I figured I'd listen to a tape on the way to campus in my car, then pop the deck into my old school Walkman (It has to be from 1994 at least) for the trek from parking lot to Lee Hills Hall. That had two drawbacks. One, I'm listening to Bill Bryson, a funny man who makes me laugh. It's one thing to laugh in the car by yourself. It's a completely different thing to laugh at seemingly nothing as you're on a solitaire stroll through the busy campus. Two, my Walkman seems to have stopped working. Maybe it's just the cold freezing the gears -- it's not the batteries, the radio works just fine. So for now, Bill will remain in the car, and I can laugh as loudly as I want.

One side effect of listening to A Walk in the Woods is that it's making me want to hike and pretend I'm hiking the Appalachain Trail just like Bill. MKT, here I come. Or maybe I'll just stick with the part of the Katy Trail that runs near campus.