A Change of Sole

Looking around at my life, it's pretty much an established fact that I was and always will be a late bloomer. No where is this more apparent than with shoes.

 Before I hit my teens "put your shoes on" was synonymous with "we're going shopping," to the point where we often assumed our shoes were in the car and then had to stay in the parking lot and wait while mom went in for groceries. I hated shoes and I hated socks, and both of them were pretty much tied up with dramatic ideas of oppression in my head. Sneakers were the worst because they not only required one to wear socks, even in summer, but they had to be tied and retied. There was a song we used to listen to about this (adult) guy who could do pretty much everything but tie his own shoelaces. 

                              That was me until I turned eight. It's probably a good thing I didn't read about feet binding when I was a kid. 

Eventually  I started having to be out, in public, for longer periods of time. Community College required me to be in shoes for hours on end and, grudgingly, I adapted. Somewhere around my fourteenth year I acquired my first pair of merrells. Those became my fall shoes, and I wore that first pair until they fell apart on me at college. Then I went and replaced them with the exact. Same. Shoe. Only the shade of brown was different, and that was a change they made at the factory. 

My summer shoes were equally imaginative. My mom bought my sister and I matching navy sandals once and I wore holes into mine and then stole my sisters (a completely fair thing to do. I can still remember the gorgeous slip-ons with the star embroidery that I never got to grow into). Since then I've made it my go-to sandal style, closed toe with wide straps, though I'm pretty sure I'm getting them from a different company each time. These shoes aren't anywhere near as durable as my merrells and, after a few months of constant use, they look just awful. My current pair was originally a creamy tan. Now it's just . . . gray.  

Somewhere in there I lost the feeling that wearing shoes was a sign of weakness and submission ( . . . . to the kind people who tear down metal jungle gyms. Remember, we're talking tennis shoes here, not heels). I even like wearing socks now, although short socks still puzzle me unless they're being worn with a poodle skirt. This acceptance has been creeping up on me for a while, as slowly as the callouses on my feet have softened. Okay, not that slow. But now that I'm starting to attempt to dress like a well-bred, if somewhat absentminded, lady, it's really no surprise that I'm starting to think about shoes. Luckily I do actually have more than two pairs of shoes. My blue clogs, for instance, which I bought on a whim during one of the few sister-shoppings sprees I've ever partaken in. I only wore them once the first two years I owned them, but they've been a real life saver this summer, and I would love more of a similar shoe (perhaps in brown or burgundy) because they're so . . . amphibious, transitioning well between barefooted summer and stocking-clad winter.  

 I also have my black and white flats, which have to be at least four years old. These come in handy a lot, and as soon as I hem my flowy black skirt I'll wear them all the time and pretend I'm a ballerina.

Then there are my cool shoes. These are the ones I only wear when I'm really bored, because my wardrobe, indeed, my whole carefully constructed image of self, can hardly support them. They've too much style. I'm always worried I'm going to ruin the sneakers, and the boots are . . . problematic to walk in. Which doesn't stop me from enjoying wearing them, I just walk funny to compensate. 

I was thinking about my shoe 'drobe and wondering how to get the most out of it. What kinds of shoes I needed so that I could have smallest number of pairs and the highest number of options. And then I started thinking about stockings, because while I've only recently liked wearing socks, I've always loved the idea of knee highs. 

                         Of course, if you get a girl shopping for socks, she's going to want to buy some clothes to go with them. And there's where I falter. It's kind of scary to think like this, because of how fun it is, and how different. I've always been materialistic, but since that's only resulted in some very well stocked bookshelves I've never felt guilty about it before. Now I feel like I might easily become either vain or a hedonist. I realize that I don't think of clothes as important - though I felt no qualms in purchasing Inkheart, or a volume of H.F. Wells novels - and that, though I think dressing smartly is as valuable an art to nurture as the ability to make said clothes, I would rather buy eight yards of a really impossible coral-orange than admit to wanting to go shopping. With all that said, it's going to be interesting seeing where my wardrobe is going and how it's going to get there: I'm betting is goes by foot. 

The Efficient Extension

Hello.

Hi?

Yes, today I want to talk a bit about a person very close to my heart: me. That's right, a few days ago I fell further into my tweens: "the irresponsible twenties between childhood and the coming of age at thirty-three."

It's really very sobering to be quite past the age where most of your fictional friends turn, magically, into adults. Especially when you, quite clearly, age like a hobbit. This year I was reminded of how lucky my parents are that I was born when I was. Not just because I'm so lovable in general, but because I need all the help I can get when it comes to being considerate and my birthday is really conducive to that. I share September not only with Frodo and Bilbo (September 22nd) but with Theo and the Geekette as well. These are two people I've known since before I got the knack of coming up with really cool aliases. They know all the embarrassing alter-egos of my past and yet, somehow, love me anyway. And, because our birthdays are all in the same month, I'm never more than a month late giving them a gift.

After a month, I kind of figure "what's the point," so, yeah, my birthday has saved my friendship probably twenty times over.

Plus, it's on national talk like a pirate day, score.


I'm a little too full of grasshopper pie right now, seeing as how that's been my dinner for the past three days, but sometime this year I really would love to do a picture tutorial of a cake. Not just any cake, but the Geekette's birthday cake. It's called The Bloody Chicken Cake, but don't worry, it's safe for most vegetarians.

It was born out of a side comment and a joke of a promise, that somehow just wouldn't die. A few months ago the Geekette came over and cooked me some chickpeas. We always seem to have a can of these in my house but, before last month, I think the last time I had eaten them was when I was seven (I don't count hummus when saying this, just as I wouldn't count salsa if I said I hated tomatoes). Anyway, she cooked them up in olive oil with curry, cumin, paprika, and a little bit of the bush basil my dad has growing by the front step. It was really good, even after she pointed out that chick peas really do look like chickens. It was so good that we decided her birthday cake should be made out of chick peas, and of course once that was voiced I had to volunteer, and thus the Bloody Chicken Cake was born. The "blood" in the title comes from my first imagining of the cake, which used blood oranges. That idea didn't last long, but the name was too good to waste.


Wanna slice?

Skittles

Sometimes I think that, when the skittles company was still in it's tender years of advertising, a wise marketer took it aside and said:

"Look, your catch phrase is a problem. Not only does it make no sense, a rainbow being nothing more than light refracted through a prism – tasteless and intangible – but it also makes the mind jump to unicorns. You don't want you're product associated with unicorns. Trust me."

And so the Skittle Company begged the wise marketer  to tell it what to do.
 "Change your slogan" he advised. But the Skittle Company didn't want to. They pleaded, groveled, and cajoled him to think of a way they could use their treasured catch phrase without having to bring in unicorns, until finally the wise old marketer said "There is a way, but it's dangerous. Not every product can pull it off."

"We'll do it," Said the skittle company. "For the sake of our rainbow of flavours, we'll do it"

And thus was born the skittle commercials: The men held by giant hands, the kid with the skittle tree, the blender angered at being replaced – all attempting to be so surreally fantastical that they make the slogan ("taste the rainbow") seem not only quite normal but safe and familiar.

At least, that's how I imagine it to be. But then again, I don't like skittles.

Cycles

아녱센요! (a-nyeong-se-yo, or my attempt at a hello).

It's nice to see everybody has survived their summers. I'm so looking forward to fall. Having only one class, I should be able to post more often, right? I guess I should warn you, I just published a post a few minutes ago, but I dated it August 15th. I actually wrote it on the seventh, but my pictures wouldn't upload, so twenty days later here it is! And yes, the power to alter my blogs chronology is some kind of scary cool. Should I say I wrote this when I was six?

Most of the things I alluded to in the previously mentioned post are actually still current. I did sign up for a class, I'm still following my study plan (loosely, but enough to make me wonder if I'm merely an alien replacement), and I haven't yet made my bento freezer staples. However, Snow White and her dwarves are scheduled to leave today for a week so I'm looking forward to a productive weekend at least. Maybe even an actual post?


I'll tell you all about my class when I have something more interesting to say than "I'm taking such-and-such at such-and-such a time." In order to distract you, can I tell you the latest news in sewing blog land? Ms. Casey, from Casey's Elegant Musings, is going to hold a circle skirt sew-along. I've watched her swing dance sew-along, and Ms. Gertie's one for Lady Grey (that was hard to watch, I love colette patterns), and I'm thinking this time maybe I won't just watch.

Desire. 

Dream.

 Do. 

The three steps of obsession. 

This, combined with my halloween costume, my language study, my class, my blog, and the fact that I do actually work now, should fill up my hours quite nicely. I'm hoping to get a lot of crafty stuff done now because, come November, I'm trying for Nanowirmo again. Last year I hit the humiliatingly low number of 5,000 words, which must not happen again. In recognition of all these plans, I'm ending this post with a sappy limerick poem. Enjoy!

My dreams sometimes seem like so much rubbish.

Like shiny candy wrappers,

Tossed away with glee.

In the sweetness of this swiftly fading present,

I give up a cloudy future

For hard and sure reality.   

In which we review some bento

I'm so glad it's August. The weather has finally started calming down, and I've begun to get those back-to-school-tingles that I love so much. Pretty soon the whole world will put on the most bewitching perfume, and we'll all start gathering "bouquets of sharpened pencils."

Here are the bento I've put together in the past two weeks. No need to squint at them, by the way, just click 'em to enlarge. 

Steak, rice, Nuts, cheese, and various veggies

Rice, egg soboro, cukes, cheese,  and zucchini cake

Rice, tamagoyaki, sausage, marinated cukes, and various fruits

You can see that I've used some unorthodox containers to accommodate my varying leftovers. I'm really happily embarrassed with my rice heart. Like a charaben bride . . . .  Anyway, to make it I placed the veggies around a cookie cutter before stuffing the thing with rice. And, yes, the rice held the whole day with the cookie cutter removed. I'm always interested in how other people's bentos hold up after being lugged to work, or even how they survive having the lid put on them – some people like to have everything popping out of the box when they take their pictures, which is striking but can hardly reflect what they see when they sit down to lunch. I know that when I use this particular bowl I have to be really careful about how I carry it, because, being a vessel of chinese take-out origins, the lid doesn't fit that securely. My other bento boxes I'm a lot more careless with, to the point where I have had to mop spilled vinegar off my blue case more than once.

Besides planning out my next round of bento freezer staples, and making an out-of-this-world study plan for my outer sloth's amusement, I've been toying with whether I should take an class at the community college. They have a folk dance class that would be a lot of fun, a digital photography class which I know I need, and various cooking classes. The cooking classes are easiest to say no to, they cost as much as seven weeks of dance class but only last one day. I can pretty much muddle my way through anything in the kitchen – though the canning and dumpling classes are really tempting – and I do need to be saving something for when I move out. More if I want to go somewhere on vacation next year. That leaves dance - bonus points for being healthy - and photography, which would benefit you all. Which would pick if you had to choose? 

Take Two

My dad took me to go see Captain America today. Me and a kid or two. It was a little weird, being in 3D, but mainly it's your basic action movie minus explosions. Not that there weren't explosion, there was just more punching than I've grown used to. Is it just me or have most movies gone over to either swords or guns?

Anyway, the dialogue can be summed up by the cutting line "You're not going to quit?" delivered with gusto from the bad guy, and the equally fitting "nope" from our dashing hero. My favorite scene was when the grenade was thrown (waaaaaaay at the beginning of the movie), but the death of the baddie was pretty epic. And the ending was mind blowing (and tragic) to someone like me who, apparently, lives under a rock.

Further proof: I just found out today that They're doing Spiderman. Again.

Talk about popular.


In other news:

This is the remainder of the dinner I made sunday: coconut rice and curry. I had the curry again the next day with noodles and it tasted even better. I actually zapped it, and I think that made the coconut cream I put in there stand out.  Back to the bento, the green stuff in the corn is some leftover cilantro, and the white liquid in the pink cup is the coconut cream. It's some kind of sweet, and oh so good when you mix it with the rice and curry. Yes, I put it in the curry and ate it with the curry. Despite  that, we still have a little bit of it left in the fridge and I'm trying not to eat it raw. Maybe if I mix it with yogurt I can call it a "natural dessert" and thereby pass it off as healthy. Cause, you know, despite giving us the bubonic plague, yellow fever, and tuberculosis, nature is looking out for us.

I finally gave in and stood on a chair for this shot. 

This is a zucchini/squash cake. It was really good, the last one leftover after Thursday's dinner – a dinner where neither my dad nor my two older brothers were present, just to give you some perspective. My aunt made these with the veggies from my grandfather's garden. The zucchini she used was immense. I didn't recognize it at first, thought it was some strange kind of squash to be honest. Thicker than my upper arms, almost as wide as my head - that's how big it was. And probably two feet long. The rice is just normal rice, with a little bit of red pepper paste, curtesy of Korea, and leftover steak. I put some dashi (or is it bonito?) flakes in it, and some rice vinegar and mirin. Despite all that it didn't really taste asian to me. I'm finding that Korean and Thai food don't. Especially Korean.
          The rice was actually almost bland, it probably needed more dashi, however the paste provided a nice kick that went well with the surprisingly flavorful veggie burger. The salad was mainly to keep the red pepper off my cherries, but I like the color it added to the "box." I actually left my stacking boxes at work the day before I took this picture, which ended up as a blessing since it forced me to use a chinese take out container (dumplings, I'm assuming). I love the circular shape and how it impacts food arrangement, and it's fun to have that much space. Those white boxes are skinny.  My next bento buy will be a circular box, probably one of these, but it won't happen for a while. I'm still not making bentos consistently enough to classify it as a hobby, definitely not enough to call it a lifestyle. I don't think it will be long before I reach that stage, though. Unlike so many other things I'm trying to get into, bentos are instant gratification. I'm happy when I'm making them, when I'm planning them, when I'm hungry at work and thinking about lunch, and, most importantly of all, eating them is like eating satisfaction. It feeds both my desire to be able to make beauty and my need to make something useful. It's creative and crafty, pretty and practical, indulgent and industrious. But mostly, it taste good, and really, that's all I care about at lunch time.

I don't mind the warm colors so much when the box is black.

 

Burrito in a Box

It's bad form to gush over food, to eat in front of people when you have no plans of sharing, and to pat yourself on the back.

I'm going to do all three.

This is the lunch I packed for myself last week. It's really simple: leftover rice (I made extra on purpose the day before), black olives,  a layer of boiled egg, a layer of chopped tomato (salted and peppered), and crumbled bacon. The white tube is a rolled up tortilla, which turned out not to be big enough for all of my goodies. In the orange cup (isn't it just too cute?) there's chipotle mayonnaise. Do not ask me why this was in the fridge. All I know is it was there and it was good. It helped my ingredients stick together and, if you'll excuse the expression, kicked the rice up a notch.

This picture has been modified to fit you perception of the world

Though I intended this bento to be a burrito, because alliteration tastes better, I ended up eating it like a salad.  I ate most of it too, even though there was a lot more rice in this than proportionally necessary. I would make this again, but I would like to try avocado slices soaked in lemon juice instead of the mayonnaise. Oh, that green with the red and yellow . . . it's enough to make anyone hungry.



Now, regarding the photos: I know I was using the wrong lens. I had the big, long one on and I should have switched it with the short one. That's why all my shots have weird angles to them, I'm not tall enough take an overhead photo with a lens a foot long. I'm actually really bad at photography, because, in a strange reversal of the Thermian transporter system, photography is more science than art. Exposure time, aperture, lighting – it's all beyond me. Not to mention my dad's camera has more options than a Starfleet ship panel.
             I do know that this kitchen is extremely hard to take photos in because it's so warm. Warm counters, warm lights. Taking these photos only an hour after the crack of dawn on a cloudy day didn't help much either. But lighting issues are only something to work around. They force you to confront a fact about picture taking that people in good lighting can blissfully ignore. So, in the great tradition of the List-People, my personal photography goal is to take one bright, colorful bento picture before summer ends completely. One worthy of the new Willy Wonka, only more appetizing.


Which brings me to my closing thought, which is namely this, you know starfleet isn't all that bad when their replicators pay just as much attention to arranging the food on the plates as they do to making who-knows-what taste just-like-mother-used-to-make. How would you even begin to tell a computer about garnishing dishes? And what invention do you think marks a civilization as, well, civilized?

Letter to a Linguist - The alphabet thickens

Ah! It's that time of the month. You know, when the fresh air seems to blow away all the chains of reason and experience, and your ideas start frolicking in the sunshine of new beginnings. 

It's my favorite time of the year, and not just because it's pops up more often than the weeds in your garden. I like it becuase I feel more alive when I'm full of hope. I like it because I think more, and think deeper, without having to necessarily do anything deep or thoughtful. It's like stepping out of gray into the after effects of a nights rain. Even the cracked sidewalks are flecked with rainbows.   

My enabler today was my mom. She took me to Office Depot and  I bought card stock and this cute little flash card holder. And yes, these are related to my Language study. It's actually an idea I had a long time ago, when I was learning Japanese. I'd thought I'd compile my own dictionary out of the flash cards I was alrady making. It didn't workout becuase at tha time the binders were still not index card sized. Some really intlligent market research has apparently taken place since then, and you can buy binders in every size and shape that can be contained in four sides. And rings.

 I love me some flash card rings.

My flash cards, naturally, will have to be updated to match the inherent awesomeness of their eventual home. I'm aiming for a little dictionary of cards, with each card featuring a word, it's various forms, and some example sentences. This, of course, will mean I'll have to take my knowledge of Korean verb construction from 0% to at least, say, 15%. 

Up to this point I have been using only Talk to Me in Korean, which is great. But listening, even when backed with work books, isn't enough. It's time to outsource for some structure. I'm going to be using wikibooks to add the necessary grain to my others light load. Wikibooks is great because it can 1) be read (and we all know I love reading), 2) it contains actual rules, and 3) it has examples for you to practice on, complete with answer key. 

In other news, my Hangul has already improved. I'm still cheating on impulse by reading the romanji first without even thinking about it, but at least when I do force my eyes on the jamo that make up this wonderful puzzle of an alphabet, I can sound them out with a child's accuracy. The hardest part for me so far is the ㅈ,ㅅ,ㅊ group set. Conventionaly these are transliterated as J/S/Ch, but I find this confusing when you get combinations like 죄, or  시, both of which can sound pretty hard to my ears depending on whose saying them, and yet neither use the "Ch" jamo, . 아이고. 

One thing I have been doing with Talk to Me in Korean that I really like is listening to their day of the week while writing out the example sentences. This obviously helps my pronunciation and listening skills, which in turn gives me a foundation for spelling, but it also has the side benefit of increasing my vocabulary and giving me hints at verb conjugation that I'm sure will come in handy while reading Wikibooks.

In other news, I've discovered that I'm losing my grasp on Hiragana. *Sigh* As if one language wasn't enough.  

Missed me?

I'm Baaaaack!

I've been gone for three weeks, housesitting for my pastor's family. It's been a lot of fun and, quite naturally, a learning experience. For instance, I've discovered I'm not really a cat person. This means that those three months I spent researching cats and cat breeds as a teen, so I could convince my parents to get me a kitten, are pretty much wasted.

Now I need I new retort for dog people.



Okay, oddest moment of the whole she-bang: having a cat jump up on my puzzle and start to eat it.

Best moment: coming "home" on thursdays to a quiet house and a bag of fresh veggies dropped off by some garden fairy.

Tips for when I actually move out: put hot pink sheets on the guest bed. That'll make them wonder.



The house I stayed at was in a neighborhood that puts San Fransisco to shame. It's the hills. It reminded me a lot of the streets of Japan, narrow and twisted, with intersections at impossible angles. Of course, in Japan they have orange mirrors placed in all the really dangerous spots (and in many not so a dangerous spots). These past few weeks, as I've been driving more and more, have made me really long for a good intersection mirror. But I digress.

The house is down a bit from its cul-de-sac by about four steps, placed randomly on the leafy path as if dropped there on the way to the door. In the back of the house, looking out the glass doors to the raised deck, you can see these tall, ivy wrapped columns just rising out of nowhere and going up, up past your field of vision. It's gorgeous and makes you feel like you're in a tree house in some exotic local. So I loved the back of the house. But I think I'd like a bit more sunlight, and having the front built into a hill, and then surrounding it by monstrous trees, doesn't really allow for that.

Every time I go off by myself I'm always shocked to learn that I can eat just about anything. Usually when I say this I mean I'm not picky, but here I mean that I'm lazy. Popcorn, and the olive oil and salt that that implies, was pretty much the staple meal for me. I made bentos at first to take to work, but by last Wednesday they had deteriorated into cheese sandwiches. If  I don't cook dinner then I don't have exciting leftovers, which means I have to put the same old into a box. If I'm going to eat the same old thing, my lazy mind reasons, why not spend two minutes on it instead of thirty? I'd like to think that a rice cooker with a timer would fix this problem, but guns are only effective in the hands of people who know how to use them.

That might have been a jump.

My brain is trying to get me to write about Montpelier, which I visited weeks and weeks ago, my job, which I've had for two months now, and all the books I've been reading. But I'm going to "leave those for another post" as it were, and log of now. I've happy, happy news about my progress with Hangul, so hopefully my next post will be of a more learned variety.

じゃ、またねえ。

From the Desk of S. - Re: the Fax

It feels weird to say it, but's it's been almost a month now. Almost a month since I started my new job. My first "real," "9-to-5," "hard day's night," job. It's been fun and scary and an adventure. Now that I'm a little more comfortable I find my mind sometimes . . . . drifting. Listening to the electronic operators asking me to leave a message, trying to figure out if "Lewis-Kent" goes after or with "Lewis," standing in front of the fax. . . . .


Ah, the Fax and I.

I knew from the first time I heard his beep of greeting that we were destined to rankle each other's souls. I'll admit I was intrigued, I had never met someone like him before. I didn't know what he was like. I thought he would help me connect with other people. But soon after I heard his dialing tone, like an electronic goose clearing his throat after swallowing bagpipes, I began to suspect otherwise. Soon the very mention of his name caused me to roll my inner eye. We differed on practically everything, bickered in a manner barely professional, and even grew to argue outright.

Through this process I could hardly help but get to know him, that Fax machine. I learned what buttons it was safe to press and which I should just let be. Suddenly, I found myself holding my breath when I heard him preparing a response for me, the sound of him printing seemed breath enough. The world seemed set on giving me excuses to visit him, and when he helped me get through, when we communicated together – I've never known such a beautiful sense of satisfaction. His simplest, most routine OK could make my heart soar. I began to notice a new tone in his messages. They seemed at times like a warm blanket to my sometimes weary soul. I  discovered – quite by accident, and yet inevitably, considering how often we were together – that he had a warm side. Hidden, but strong.

Though we still disagree, still end most of our meetings with him clamming up stubbornly and I stomping away to my desk, we can no longer pretend we hate each other. I can no longer pretend. He is no longer "That Fax" in my mind. Perhaps he isn't "my Fax" yet, maybe he never will be. Fate seems to have other plans for us. And yet, we now belong, in a strange and crazy way, to each other.

 I and the Fax.

The Fax and I.

Letter to a Linguist

Dear Theo,

I know I told you a while ago that I was studying Korean.


I lied.


I was actually doing something diametrically opposed to the very idea of studying, but since that something involved hearing hours and hours of colloquial Korean, I felt the term "studying" was justified.

Not that I didn't study at all, of course. I looked up how to read Hangul (한글) a few months ago. It was kind of a mistake, because I found out that words I'd been hearing as "kamsamnida" and "bian," were actually, when using a strict romanji system, spelled "gamsahapnida" and "mian"  (감사핲니다 – thank you, 미안 – sorry). Not being able to differentiate the k/g, ch/j, b/m sounds really threw me off. You know I have problems enunciating in English, I don't need another language's issues thrown in. It seemed obvious that Hangul would require actual study to be able to read or write it properly.

Actual study was what I was avoiding.

But fast forward a couple of months to the present and I still spend countless hours loafing around while listening to Korean being thrown back and forth am exposed to the quirky character of the Korean tongue every now and then.  I can no longer point to the measly fifteen words I know and say, "See, I am doing something edifying." The moment of truth has come. Either I must actually study, thereby justifying my intake, or give up all things Korean.

Except the food. We must draw the line somewhere.

In all honesty, the moment of truth came a few weeks ago, but my inbox was full so I didn't get it right away. After I did get it, I made a quick pro/con sheet:

Con: involves actual work;  sucess, as unlikely as it is, means eventually admitting you can do work to people you'd rather have think of you as a bum; failure is inevitable unless redefined; it has no benefits but the "joy of learning" because, though knowledge is power, scientist have yet to figure out how to use it to fuel a car 

Pros: You get an excuse to say "buooyol!" (뭬예요 – what,  Romanji – mwoyeyo); you get a chance to learn why all the M's sound like B's; You've been looking for a good excuse to exercise your researching skills; It's the only way you can make "well rounded" sound like a virtue.

It was your fairly typical tie, the kind that makes you wonder if your subconcious is just using you as some kind of behavorial experiment, when I realized that starting a new project would mean making a new binder. You know I've never passed by a chance to make a binder, and it seemed rather late in the game to stop now. "Besides," I threw out the infinity decision making, "I can always stop when I want to."

So, since Thursday, I've completed my research and have started using Talk to Me in Korean, which is a completely free site with podcasts, pdfs and (swoon) workbooks. The podcasts are just what you'd expect after listening to JapanesePod 101, only I feel I'm learning more from them. Probably because I know less, but still, it's an encouraging feeling. I've listened to the first ten lessons of level one a few times and am preparing to go through the corrosponding workbook before moving on. I'm stalling because I haven't practiced my spelling at all as much as I should have, so I don't really know how to write half the words I've learned. I'm loving these podcasts because they help me understand what I've been hearing these past six months. Not necessarily the meaing of the words, that's a given, but the logic of the sounds. I'm pretty used to listening to Korean, so it no longer sounds strange to me – it's no longer indistinguishable from a Mediterranean language, you could say – but that doesn't mean it makes sense. The podcast takes all the niggling little observations that the incurable scholar in me has made and ties them all together into a neat little bow. And then attaches the bow to a present. I'm dying to open the present, even though I'm pretty sure there's no chocolate inside, but I get the feeling it'll need a few more bows before it's complete.

Anyway, Crazy,  I know you love languages so I thought I'd keep you up to date about my studies. Sometimes I learn something that's so small it's barely even worth mentioning  but it causes me to geek out in the worst possible way. And then there's the long-winded, introspective looks at my own native tongue which I could hardly share with the World at Large. So yeah, you'll be hearing from me again shortly. Don't leave town.

Love,

B. Sixer

P.S. If your name was Shirley, I'd say you're Shirley mine ^_- My New Job is filling my head with bad, bad puns. "Bi"-yane.

Miso

I cannot find the words to describe miso. Perhaps there are somethings that can only be truly understood after a long familiarity. If this is so, miso is certainly one of them.

It's not that words simply stop coming to me when I sniff at a box of miso, or raise a spoon to lips for a quick taste. Licking my fingers absentmindedly, I find that it is sharp, salty, strong. But the only usefully informative word that has come to me is cheese.

Not that miso tastes like cheese, my mind refuses to accept this statement, more like miso has the same spirit as cheese. It's aged, for one thing, and it is, as previously alluded to, salty. Its odor is pervasive and its taste distinct. These are attributes of cheese as well. I suspect that, scientifically speaking, tofu is closer kin to the cheddar than miso, but tofu has few qualities. Cheese has many.

I'm looking forward to growing closer to miso, close enough to tell the color of it's eyes, you could say. Right now I am still learning to like it. It's the person who you would love going to a movie with but would hate having to eat dinner with beforehand. Who'd you play cards with all night, but would never invite for a walk. You might frown at it in baked goods but savor its presence in soup. It is irreplaceable in my udon's broth, and that binds it to me forever – like a brother-in-law.

Hello miso, fancy seeing you here. Want to go for a walk?

Triple Soy Loaf, from JustBento 

Rind-up

This pie, cake really, was great. So delicious and moist . . . . The recipe came from Cooks Illustrated, which has to be the most enjoyable cooking magazine, whether for pleasant perusal or serious study. Bon Appetite has pretty, glossy pictures, but Cooks Illustrated has art, not to mention actual articles to accompany each recipe, sprinkled with good advice and culinary science. The cake itself is harder to find than cook, in the index it's not called "Boston cream pie" but something like "wickedly delicous boston cream pie," which can throw off even the best index skimmer. There are three parts to this delight: cake, cream, and glaze, and I cannot wait for an excuse to bake the cake all by itself. It's that good.

If you click it, it expands.

The cake was for Easter, which was delicious thank you, but even before that blessed day arrived I managed to check off one of my culinary goals: the watermelon rind pickle. I found this recipe in The Woman's Home Companion Cookbook, which was published in the early forties, and also in The Foxfire Book. If you have never heard of The Foxfire Book (I believe it's derived from an old magazine series, but I haven't actually looked it up) than you are missing out. Such useful information lies within their covers. Everything from building a log cabin to slaughtering a hog. There are even pictures.  My copy of Foxfire comes from my misspent childhood, when I went around reading The Black Stallion, My Side of the Mountain, and Stalking the Wild Asparagus*. Now I read Heyer. Oi vey.
      Anyway, the idea of pickling rind, an hither to useless substance, tickled the remainders of my childhood fancy. Especially since the recipes called for cinnamon, cloves, and allspice. And yes, the two sources provided nearly identical recipes. So last Monday the Geekette came over and helped me boil them into existence. The Geekette has been a co-conspiritor of mine since before we really care to remember, and is responsible for such experiments as fried angel food cake. With her help we combined the ingredients and managed to make the sweetest pickles I've ever had. We used the rind of one watermelon, which yielded about one quart of thin, unevenly proportioned, white squares. We left out the slacked lime, because for some reason we were out ( I'd also never heard of it before out side of historical fiction, which I make a habit of not learning from. Can you buy this at the grocery store?). The result was a slightly gummy confection with a bite only slightly reminiscent of bread and butter pickles. The squares were deep brown, mostly because we used ground spices instead of their whole counter parts. In fact, the ground spices were such a bother that we had to rinse off the pickles before eating them in order to avoid covering our tongues in cinnamon paste. Blech. Even though these pickles were peculiar I'm definitely going to make them again. Especially since I found a use for the left over juice.
             See, the Geekette and I deemed actually pickling the pickles to be a waste of resources, since it wasn't like we had a whole truckload of them. So there I was, with a whole bucket of christmas scented syrup in my fridge, wondering what to do with it. Mouse? Ice cream?  Delicate lemon squares? The last was the clear winner. When I was a child it seems my mom made desserts all the time, every other memory is about us beating egg whites for meringues – innocently called kisses throughout my whole childhood – or sniffing at the lemon scented air as mom pulled a pan of yellow goodness out of the oven. I haven't had lemon squares in ages now, so recreating them with pickle juice was a lot of fun. The best part was my family didn't touch them. Score for the pickle bar.


In other news, I am now the proud owner of a Honda Fit, and Doctor Who has started up again. Oh, and I discovered how to make my dad's camera zoom and focus. Like, at the same time.

Wow, it's been quite a week.

Be blinded by the cake, ignore the absence of pickle pictures! 

*Speaking of Euell Gibbons, someone I trust and admire deeply told me they had made wisteria fritters before. Wisteria. Fritters. Oh my, imagination overload.

A Change of Sorts

Okay, I've got those creative itchies again. I've been making shrinky-dink jewelry all morning, and now my finger are a little sore from closing wire rings without pliers. Luckily I have something to post, to give my poor fingers a little rest. I was staring at my computer screen a few nights ago, thinking "ugh, now I have to go to bed," when my desktop caught my eye. It was pretty boring. A few weeks ago I had changed it, hastily, to a reminder to pray for Japan, but I had kept all my Desktop goodies from my last make-over. The result was haphazard and utilitarian, which describes half of my life (the other half is haphazard and just for show).  I was staring at this rather pathetic surface when an idea came to me. I had just taken a hundred pictures of a teapot, because my life really is that exciting right now, why not use one of those as a springboard for something tranquil and efficient? So that's what I tried to do.


Although, efficient might not have been the best adjective.

This is where my real skills come out, because finding all the components for this is little more than researching, and that's what an English Major is all about (and you thought all we did was read. . . ). I knew I wanted a vintage feel, I'd been siting on the Faber Castell pen and Gramophone icons for a while and the hazy image of used tea leaves called for something elegant and old world. So that morning I went in search for some complementary icons for the other things I keep on my dock and desktop. I also downloaded this interesting app, which converts pictures to .icns. Nifty. It means I no longer have to worry about downloading png. files. Most of the icons on my dock come from Babase's Old School set, but here's the run down on the rest:

Hardrive: Teacup

Random Folders: Vintage folders (I normally keep these folders off my desktop, but the vintage folders just had to be used, so I pulled them out)

Misc. Pics Folder: Old world camera

Safari: Samurai compass

Firefox: Wooden tablet

iTunes: Gramophone 

iPhoto: Antique Camera

Textedit: Faber Castell

Booxter: Fedora  . . . . or not, but equally cool. 

Numbers: Baking Containers (I thought they looked like the graph bars on the standard icon)

iTaf: Coffee pot (iTaf wakes me up every morning – I thought coffee was an appropriate symbol)

As for the other goodies on my desktop, I'm using the Bowtie theme "Geeky 2.0" by Laurent to keep track of iTunes. The rest is all Geektool. I thought the sunrise shell was a cool idea, and I'm  so happy to finally have found a weather script that actually works. I can't make these scripts myself, but I can copy and paste like the best of them! Halfway through this project I tried switching to Geektool 3 (which I didn't even realize was out. Sadness) but . . . shell text can't have drop shadows? Eh? Besides, somehow in the switch my words from 2.1 were stuck on my desktop. Saved, but not transferred to 3.0.  So I just switched back and pretended nothing happened. 


Changing my desktop is the closest I can get to rearranging the furniture in my room, which is what I did in college whenever I needed a change. There's something soothing in looking at a space, sizing up your resources, and making something new out of the two. So soothing that I actually zoned out for a while on it, working from seven 'til ten without even realizing how much time was going by. Today I'm going to try to cut out some fabric pieces (test run of project runway 2848, in a blue cotton knit), and make some decisions regarding a car. Looking at this background I can believe that it's all doable, especially if  I stop to brew a pot of tea first. 

On knitting

                                             

I don't knit.

I know how to knit. I belong to knitting websites and live a fiber filled life vicariously through knitting bloggers. I stalk sweaters. I keep a mental list in my head of what I want to knit.  I buy yarn. I cast-on to knitting projects. But I don't knit.

Sometimes when life is really bleak and gray, when I seem to be stuck in the first fifteen minutes of The Wizard of Oz, I'll yearn for yarn and pattern. Sometimes when I'm tired, or when I'm full of energy and need something to occupy my hands, my fingers will itch for the feel of merino and the smooth, solid rainbows I use as needles. I stifle these feelings whenever I can. Because I don't knit.


But sometimes the longing to be, not just a partaker in beauty, but an orchestrator – a crafter, not a user –sometimes that desire is too strong to silence. And sometimes the need to be useful, to produce something, to say "see, I have accomplished," sometimes it threatens to break forth into the world. To do something truly impulsive. When my dreams of beauty and ability combine, then I forget. I forget that I do not knit.

And so, I cast-on.

I delve into my basket of  WIPs (works in progress).

And I start to knit.


And it is beautiful. And it is calming. And, somehow, even though it's enjoyable, I feel it means something.  It's not like I'm watching TV, reading Heyer, or composing a poem about the sky. Those are ways of consuming time. But knitting, knitting is using time. It's taking it and making it into something else. The sticks in my hand click together, catch the yarn, pull it through, and in that instant also catch a bit of time as it hurries past, and so the time I spend knitting is saved. It remians with me for as long as the knitted object does.

But the more I knit the less time I capture.

Before long I am lost. I'm rereading charts, counting stitches, checking deffinitions for common terms (K2 tog,  ssk, psso). I'm not knitting. Not anymore than a drowning man can be said to be swimming. At first I try finding the source of the problem. I tink, unknitting my project stitch by stitch until I reach an area unaffected by my confusion.  I frog, pulling out my needles and ripping back two or three rows with a grim enthusiasm. I'm not knitting. I'm tinkering. I feel doubt creep up on me. Maybe this project really will never get finished. Maybe this yarn is a bad choice for this pattern. Maybe I'll just go bury this out in the yard and pretend it never happened. So, in an attempt to salvage my urge to create, I take short cuts. I decrease redundant stitches, create necessary ones out of thin air. I stubbornly ignore the instructions in order to stay in pattern. I am not knitting. I am fudging.


Eventually I reach a point where the ideal world of knitting becomes worse than real life. It becomes a world where everything I touch falls apart, gets knotted, felts. A world where I can't do anything useful or productive. Where trying to make things better only makes things worse. At this point I lay down my needles, stuff the yarn back in its cubby hole, and vow to pick it up tomorrow when I've "calmed down." But I never do. I leave it there, gathering dust, until I've forgotten that I don't knit. Until that world of intense focus wrought by missing stitches and mis-crossed cables starts to look like peace again.


In the 'tween times, when I am sane(er), I remember: I don't knit.





But maybe I sew.

This picture isn't as blurry on Flickr

Syfy, or what we can look forward to

A dear friend and I often lament the fall of Sci-fi. Televised sci-fi, that is. Now that Stargate has ended (sob) there dosen't really seem to be anything left in that genre. The shadow kings of the entertainment industry managed to kill star trek with a single season of Enterprise, and Josh Wheddon's Firefly was forced to use alternative media options, like comic books and movies. Even Heroes, which was more syfy than sci-fi, was helped, limping, off air a few years ago. Where have all the good plots gone?

Well, the same friend has emalied me a list of possible upcoming T.V. shows, and I thought I might use it to show the world that hope might not be that far under the couch cushions. Out of the seventeen shows listed, I thought five of them sounded like fun. Not necessarily "Where have you been all my life," but at least "I'd like to watch your pilot and see if you're as nutty as you sound."

Once Upon a Time

This show sounds like Eureka. Only with fairies. That's right, faries. I'm a little shocked by how many of the shows mentioned on the list featured fairies. They're not like witches, vampires, or zombies - edgy and badcore in mass-marketable ways. They're, well, they're fairies. I'm wondering if this show (and the other shows that plan on featuring them, like Grimm) will be using fairies from fae, or fairies á la Eion Colfer's Artemis Fowl series. At any rate, I'm not really interested in watching this show. Eureka was fun, but it's format was too limiting for any ground breaking plot. Once Upon a Time will probably also  have a new catastrophe every week, but at least it will have to be creative when it does. Eureka could call on aliens, hidden nukes, and clones whenever it needed some excitement. What is Once Upon a Time going to do, delve into necromancy?*

17th Precinct

      Again with the fantasy. Here Civil Servants, of some sort, will have to operate in a world where magic trumps science. But this comes from someone well steeped in Sci-fi, Ronald D. Moore: Klingon specialist and Battlestar Galactica re-imaginist. . . .  Re-imaginer. . . .

Developer.

Though I've never watched Battlestar Galactica myself, I've been coerced taught to respect it. It's deep people – that's what I've heard. So even though I'm so over the whole police thing I'm really curious about this show. May Mr. Moore follow the example of Diane Wynne Jones and make a method for his magic.

REM

    This show looks painful. In a scripted way. But it is actual sci-fi, complete with dimensions. No namby-pamby fantasy creatures here, instead the main character finds himself jumping between two different realities, one in which his son is dead and the other in which his wife is, well, dead. Talk about a rock and a hard place. I can't really see myself watching this all they way through, because I like sunshine and rainbows in my cup of tea, but I'm assuming that this show is actually going somewhere. You know, plot-wise.

Locke & Key

      Definitely the winner of the Cute Tittle award, according to blastr the main characters in this show are a coupe of siblings. Add in an uncle, an old house, and the discovery of  a few "special doorways" and I'm thinking this one might actualy hold my attention for a whole season. Maybe it's just my age, but I love stories with kids in them, and I don't think there are enough of them on T.V., unless you count youth programing, which of course I don't. The doorways sound hopeful, but I do have to wonder if this show will be Narnia or Bridge to Terabethia. That is, knowing the kids have gone through some ordeal, can we really assume these doorways are real?

Touch
     I guess, technically, this would be categorized as sci-fi.  Clairvoyance goes either way, but since in this case the prophet is an autistic child, fake science seems to be in play. With the dad as a peon for an airport, I'm not sure how the writers are going to pursue the inevitable "imminent demise of the planet/ country" plot-line successfully, but I'm sure they have a plan. My hope is that this show will be better than Dead Zone, which managed to keep it's psychic visions modest until near the third or fourth season. I wish directors would realize that once apocalypse begins nothing else really seems important (i.e. we no longer care about the drama with your girlfriend,  the fact that your cat has gone missing, the death of the local baker, etc.). If the characters are going to be in a panic over a perceived threat for half a season it had better be really scary-bad, with long-lasting results, if it's going to happen at all. An apocalypse that no one seems to remember next season is going to be forgotten by viewers too. Or worse, they'll remember enough that they won't care when the next one comes round.



There, those are the pilots I would watch. I'd like to note, again, that only two of these even remotely resemble a really good sci-fi show. And those were the major sci-fi players out of a list of seventeen. It would be equivalent to wishing for a pony if I hoped for a show as well done as Babylon 5 – which was novel in that it had a well-developed plot which spanned multiple seasons, but was beautiful because it gracefully folded itself away when the plot ended –  I'd be happy with a second Voyager at this rate. I don't know guys, you read the list and then tell me what shows you think will pan out. Better yet, tell me what sci-fi shows you've enjoyed watching in the past. If the networks decide not to carry anything decent we might be stuck with reruns this fall.



-----------------------------------
*That sounds disturbingly close to werewolf/vampire/witches to me, though, and they better not mix those with fairies. Let's keep our unrealities separate, okay?

Interesting Corners of the Net

Does a net even have corners?

I'm going to have a lot of fun going through my bookmarks. The vast majority of them aren't blogs, or other places that you'd go to everyday, but just interesting pages to browse through. Seen by themselves these pages are a little eccentric, but I hope that by arranging them in eclectic groups they will form the virtual equivalent of a sight seeing tour. Perfect for the rainy weather we're becoming accustomed to.

A good example, Handwriting-L talks about how to give people a psychological evaluation merely by studying their penmanship.  Not the kind of thing you're going to need, but if you click on the tab that says "analyses" and skim through an example of how to tell someone's a control freak through the tension of their writing, you will have all you need to analyze your own handwriting. Once you've done your own it's only fair to do your friends' too. What does your middle zone say about you?

Equally entertaining, if more educational, is the Exploratorium, which I have bookmarked so that I can quickly pull up my age on other planets. How old am I on  Mercury? Why, 89 – I know, I age well. On Neptune? 0.13 years. That's pretty mind boggling, to think that in the whole course of my life Neptune hasn't completed even one rotation around the Sun. According to the Expolatorium, Neptune takes almost 165 years to make a complete orbit, so the chances of me celebrating my first Neptunian birthday is solely dependent on the invention of cryogenics. On the other hand, I'm turning 35 on April first (tomorrow!), if you go by the Venusian calendar. Maybe I should throw a party?

Maybe you're not in the mood for reading, maybe you want to do something. No fear, my bookmark file has something for you too. This has been on my to do list for a long time, actually. It's instructions on the coptic stitch, one of the stitches used in book binding. If you do a google search on it you can actually find whole blogs written by people who bind books by hand. Just the thought makes my head feel a little lighter. This link leads to a picture on flikr, though. A simple sketch of coptic stitch basics, which can be applied to either a few sheaves or reams and reams, binder's choice. It's a simple little project, but the one time I attempted it I managed to get my holes all out of line. Moral of the story: precession matters.

If you are in the mood for reading, let me direct your attention to The Pioneer Woman Cooks. Run by the spunky Mrs. Ree – mother, wife, rancher, cook, and author – The Pioneer Woman Cooks is great fun to read even if you hate cooking. For one thing, it features the most gorgeous photography (and of food! It makes me think of a passage in C.S. Lewis' Screwtape letters actually, the pictures are that bad). Then there's Mrs. Ree's "keeping it real" wit, easy instructions, and love for butter. As if this weren't enough, the food all taste good. Even if you don't want to make them yourself, you might want to share some of the recipes with people in your life who love you. Then you can guilt them into cooking for you as a way of saying thanks. I've made the sheet cake twice already, hampered only by the fact that, when I made it the first time, I didn't believe I was really supposed to let it cover the whole pan. In my defense, I'd never had sheet cake before. Unlike the other links, which you'll probably go to once and then never go to again,  the PWC demands constant surveillance and a place in your blogroll. Bon Appetite!

Putting a Period to it

                 Georgette Heyer's magic is starting to dwindle away, but I am determined to get the last drops from her. I'm trying to deide which shall be the fourth, and probably last, novel of hers to be read. Her books are light and airy, with a tone of not taking themselves too seriously which instantly puts readers at ease and lets them simply enjoy the lark to follow rather than analyze it half to death. Her characters are capricious, come in various outside wrappings, but in the end all look rather them same. The Brother, the Sly Hero, the Outspoken Heroine . . .  they are starting to pop up in at an alarming frequency. So far my favorite is still Cotillion, the first one I read. I love the male lead in this book because he is so different from so many other male leads, but also because he has that breed of sensibility that is often overlooked: address. Plus, his dialogue is great fun to read. All those short sentences! The Convenient Marriage I didn't like at all. Oh, I enjoyed it of course, no one can deny that it wasn't prettily written, but I felt distant from the characters. They weren't people I could really care about, and nothing can spoil a book faster than that. Oh, and why, if you had an awful name like Horatia, would you shorten it to the equally tragic handle "Horry"? It makes no sense, rather like the girl it belongs to. I don't think seventeen year-olds of that period would have been that unaware of how their own world worked one moment, and so  fast the next. The third one I read, Arabella, was decidedly funny,  because how could that man have done such a horrible thing? But – I hate to say it  because it sounds so trite – but really it was fantastical.    
               All of the books put me in mind of amateurish fantasies, since Heyer spends so much time reminding us we are in Regency England. I understand why she felt she had to, but entertainment should not require an encyclopedia of historical fashion, or an exstensiv knowledge of Dandy slang to be completely understood. I like slang, I would love to own an enclyopedia of fashion, but I can't be bothered to look up words when ten to one the are not in my dictionary. A glossary in the back of the book would have transported me beyond the realm of description, but I didn't see one. Perhaps that's just the kindle version? And how come none of the female characters remembered the need for a special license? In Heyer's world, where marriage is The Goal of every girl, you would think they'd know that if there is no time to issue banns before a wedding then a special license must be procured. It is interesting to note that Jane Austen, who actually lived at that time, managed to write books that didn't drown in period references. Then again, none of her rakes ever get the girl.
              Now that I have brought up Jane Austen, I might as well roll up my sleeves and make a job of it. I don't want it to seem like I am tearing these books apart, but really, some of the reviews have said they were The Thing after Austin, and I find this to be a little inaccurate. And somewhat insulting, though I'm not sure why. Jane Austen's romances, besides being delightful reads that have stayed accessible for two hundred years, have deep three dimensional characters who make tough decisions, undergo the blows of fate, and mature beautifully  by the end of the book. They are, some may argue, beneficial to the reader's character. Georgette Heyer's . . . well, they are't. In Cotillion the heroine may at least be said to realize her wrong and grow up, but the other two novels I have had the pleasure to read are thoroughly shallow. The girls  know better but – we may as well not wrap it in clean linen and call it a mistake – by a complete lack of self-control, principles, and foresight they do it anyway. The book is then a record of the other mistakes they make trying to get themselves out of their first one, until the catastrophe reaches a climax. The climax, of course, takes places between the hero and his heroine and results in all the joy of a happy marriage. I say "his heroine" because the hero in these novels has no problem finding out exactly what the heroine's first mistake was and why it was made and is, though it's never so bluntly put, the one who finally ends the whole messy cycle.
              What I dislike about this whole plot structure is that it leaves no room for the characters to either grow or feel sorry for their actions. After all, that lie caught them a guy who wouldn't have paid any attention to them otherwise. To resolve to not be so impetuous in the future is nothing at all like being actually repentant. To feel sorry for what you have done means little if your sorrow is only for how it has affected you. These heroines will probably make another mistake of a similar sort in the near future, and it's doubtful their husbands will do anything but laugh and watch them flounder until they grow bored and come to their rescue. The end result is that these "strong willed" females end up being ten times more dependent on their male counterparts than a more docille lady would be, which is kind of funny when you think about it. Especially when you admit that very few of the male leads are actually nice people. In contrast, Jane Austen's  female characters (well, most of them) develop a undeniable strength as the novel progress. I'm thinking of Elinor mainly, from Sense and Sensibility. She is the ideal image of a strong willed woman in the regency era, even more so than Elizabeth. And yes, she falls in love and eventually gets married. It's how these things work. Austen's characters in general are three dimensional and her plots contain themes. Georgette Heyer's heroes and heroines have only obtained to the second dimension, and there's not much to discuss aside from the clothes (lots and lots of cravats and boots). But, as I've already said, this does not stop them from being a delightful romp.
            If you are still not sure whether you want to read Heyer let me describe her in the best way I know how: by comparing her to other books. If you have already read Heyer and enjoyed her I hope you will try some of these next. Off the top of my head I'd say Sorcery and Cecile, or the Enchanted Chocolate Pot, an epistolary romance set in a regency England which, as one would expect from it's co-author, Patricia Wrede, contains magic. Sadly I would not recommend the sequel to this book for the world, but Patricia Wrede's Enchanted Forest series (while having nothing at all to do with Heyer's romances) has to be one of my all time favorites. The first two book are the best – and the second one has the decided advantage of being also a romance –  while the third one is just weird. My sister and I still fight over whether the fourth one is the worst of the lot or "okay in it's own right."  Anyway, returning to the light hearted romances, I would have you read Daddy Long-legs,  which I must admit a particular fondness for, along with Lady Jane by Mrs C. Jamison. These are both older novels set in America, in the early 20th century I believe, but they could be about ancient Rome for all they reflect modern life. Daddy Long-legs is the lighter of the two, though neither of them are as wonderfully edifying as Louisa Alcott's Rose in Bloom or Old Fashioned Girl (which, if you are looking for something just like a Heyer you should not read. They do, however, have some interesting descriptions of clothing, and even speak of how to use old dresses to make new ones, as Arabella's mother does).      
            Somewhere between the moralistic Alcott and the jolly-good-time Heyer is Martel's The King's Daughter, which has nothing at all to do with turning dress, or finding an eligible match. I think this was actually a school book once, since it's set in the Canadian wilds, but it's so completely a romance that anything educational in it can easily be overlooked. The same goes for Mara, Daughter of the Nile, which insists on appearing in home-schooling catalogs as if it were a treatise on Egyptian culture and society, but is nothing more than the most dramatic of romances. All one has to do is say slave-girl and spies and you know that no one is reading it because  they like history. None of these, except of course the first one, is a regency, but they are all helpless romance novels which I've managed to read (*cough* more than once *cough*) despite my prejudice against that genre. If you're looking for something to fill that Austen-ian void try Jane Eyre or Alcott's works, which aren't as subtle as Austen's but are perfectly fine specimens all the same. And don't forget Elizabet Gaskall, her North and South not only deals with the themes of pride and prejudice, but also with capitalism and charity. I listened to it via Librivox and found it particularly interesting since social welfare is hip nowadays. I mean, you can even benefit the world by buying a doll. If, however, all you really want is a cute love story minus the drama, do what I do when I really want to smile and read a copy of Montgomery's Further Chronicles of Avonlea or Kate Wiggin's Ladies in Waiting. They're both collections of short stories and may be likened, with only the slightest bit of artistic license, to a sampler of Godiva chocolate in a world of king sized candy bars.

Bookmarks

I haven't accomplished much today, but I have that very satisfying, full-up feeling that seems to wrap itself around my spine whenever I have enjoyed a book, and I have definitely been enjoying a book. I obviously need to extend my circles, for I had not heard of Georgette Heyer until a week ago, even though anyone who knows me must realize that anything taking place in the Regency period is sure to elicit, if not absolute delight, at least a little polite amusement. Even in the realm of science fiction, some of my favorite works have been described as "space regency." Oh, just the idea of dinners, and etiquette, and giving someone the cut all while piloting spaceships and discovering plots of intergalactic espionage . . . well, whose heart wouldn't give a little leap?
       Just because I haven't been productive today (or the day before that) doesn't mean I never get anything done, and it is to prove this that I present to you The Kindle Case:

Design: my own.
Execution: my own.
Awesomeness: the fault of the orange and blue, plastic coated fabric which takes the place of honor on the outside of the case.
          Inside is providence, in the form of some blue fabric scavaged from wht I'm am informed was once a curtain, though surely I can't remember my family ever having curtains of either this style or shade. I still need to affix the closure, in the form of a hook and eye, to the tab and front flap. Also, having used it to read Cotillion this morning, I find that it might be sensible to add a small strap for my glasses to hang off of, and perhaps a small pocket for that most necessary of companions, the tissue. I can't seem to go anywhere without wanting one eventually, and as of yet, my wardrobe is singularly lacking in pockets. Yes, I often feel like Corduroy.
          I'm loving my kindle, despite my passion for the feel and smell of it's ink and paper counter parts. I love that when it turns off it shows me pictures of Agatha Christie, Jane Austin, or Charlotte Bronte, as if it knows that these ladies are particular favorites of mine. The knowledge that I can lay it aside to transfer a load of laundry, or nuke a plate of pancakes, without having to worry about finding my place is quite comforting. I slide the switch to the right and the green light flickers on as the screen hesitates. I catch my breath, will my page be lost? I know that if my kindle's recall fails the chances of me finding my page will be wholly dependent on my patchy memory and dexterity in querying. I can only feel apprehension as the page loads. Slowly the ink dissolves away and then reforms itself. Letters, words, in truth the exact page I was perusing not a moment before, restores itself to my sight. It makes the necessity of bookmarks quite unnecessary, which is good. I am out of the habit of using them, even for really long, ink and paper books, and it has been many years indeed since I dared crease a corner for the purpose. I might stow a tissue in between the pages when interrupted suddenly from time to time, but I can usually navigate the pages of a book without any such aid.
         In fact, the only bookmarks I use with any kind of regularity are those found on the internet. These I find quite useful, and employ them to the point where they are almost a collection. I have some that are older than my current computer, and some that were added just yesterday, and the task of keeping them properly organized is my constant delight. Some of them deserve more than to be stored in my dusty files (though, I suppose there is no dust in an electric folder). With this in mind, I propose to introduce them to you in hopes that, even if they don't end up on your own list of bookmarks, they will at least be a little aired out.

                             (Emily Dickinson, another favorite, as I too have "never seen a moor.")