When the Parents are Away...

...the daughters have some nice quiet time together.


Sister Time!

Kate and I have had a fun weekend hanging out together. Both my parents went to visit their respective parents (Mom with Becky in tow--check out her cool picture on Facebook!), leaving us to hold down the fort. 

Mostly we were incredibly silly while watching "us" movies: First The Merchant of Venice (the "me" movie), with me interpreting and Kate asking lots of intelligent "why"s; then Cabaret (the "Kate" movie), which I saw for the first time and really enjoyed. There was so much in it, and I always appreciate stories with lots of issues and ideas well-packed into them. Very ahead-of-its-time. I do have to admit that it was nice to have a Nazi movie that ended before any of the main characters died or got carted off--though since I didn't know that, I spent most of the movie nervously waiting for something to go horribly wrong. 

I have to say, though:

     Cliff:  Screw Maximilian!
     Sally:  I do!
     Cliff:  ...
     Sally:  ...
     Cliff:  So do I.

Usually when the very thing I expect to happen in a plot does happen, I'm disappointed or worse. This time, however, I was delighted to hear that the movie/play was not too old for the response I anticipated to actually come out.


Cooking Creatively

Since Mom was away for most of the week, I got to do a bit of cooking...and when I cook without a plan, things tend to get...interesting. 

For example, I decided to make a quiche, so I looked up a recipe for a "Mexican" quiche in a cook book. First I had to cut about half the things that went in the egg mixture, because they were meats, things that didn't sound like they'd taste good without meat, or things one of our eaters didn't like. So I pretty much just said to heck with it and put in whatever sounded good to me--onions, mushrooms, some red peppers mom had started using earlier in the week, feta cheese, and extra spinach for Kate (and because I like it). The feta was a flop, as it seems to lose its flavor when I cook with it. 

I got a bit fancy with the spices when I mixed the eggs to include a little more of the black pepper Dad likes and a lot of the cumin that I learned to love with my eggs in Morocco. And then, when I poured the egg into the pie shell full of beautifully layered filings...it barely covered them. The recipe called for three eggs. I'd thought it a bit low, but this was ridiculous! I ended up using a total of eight to cover the fillings.

The quiche turned out beautifully and tasted excellent. Even Kate, who doesn't generally like quiche, at most of a slice--which, yes, I'll admit, was a bit thicker than Mom's quiches generally are. 

Kate and I consulted yesterday on what we ought to make for tonight, when our parents would be home. We agreed on stir fry--easy, pretty healthy, and we had a mysterious container full of pasta to throw in. It ended up being more of a pasta primavera (or so Mom says, since I honestly don't know what a primavera is), with carrots and broccoli (those went in first to soften up), onions, mushrooms, some capers, and the last of the red peppers with the olive oil they'd been in. After Kate took her portion I added some leftover chicken for us meat-eaters. It was very good and I'll have leftovers for lunch tomorrow.


And now, to wrap up, I have a question for all two of you reading this.

I need to take a break from The Count of Monte Cristo (1/3 of the way) to read some currently popular books so that I have intelligent, timely things to say at job interviews. I have a few books in mind, but do any of you have suggestions? 

Birthday Weekend

My birthday weekend was pretty good, all things considered, though I missed sharing chocolate-covered strawberries or killer chocolate cake with the housemates. But Mom made me a delicious yellow cake with chocolate frosting--my favorite--and Kate worked hard to keep my candles alight until it was time to blow them out. 

On Friday, after I finished my cleaning, I curled up with The Count of Monte Cristo and later traded it off for my laptop to work on my story. I'd been stumped about where to start it, but then I just got it last Monday on my walk to work. So I hurried up, got to my waiting cafe early, and started writing. I'm not ready to post any of it yet, but for the time being you can get a little sense of what it used to be if you read "Goblinized" over on DeviantArt. It's just a few paragraphs of a silly idea, and I've gone quite a different direction since I wrote that, but the character is still involved--though in a smaller role and a different form. 

Anyway, I was writing when Kate rang the doorbell--came home early for someone with so many after-school activities. I'd like to flatter myself that it was at least a little bit for me. We watched Pirates of the Caribbean together, as you may have seen on my Twitter, since I realized I hadn't watched it since she'd given me my own copy of the DVD for my previous birthday and it's one of my favorite fun movies. 

Dinner was white chicken enchiladas, a favorite of mine because we always make extras that I get to keep eating throughout the week, with mango on the side. Yum! Guess what I'm having for lunch today...

One of the gifts I was most excited to see was the next four of Neil Gaiman's Sandman graphic novels. So you can probably guess what I did most of the day on Saturday, with a break to listen to the radio play version of Neverwhere. 

Welp, that's all for this rather boring entry. Thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday this weekend!

Little Acts of Heroism

Bit pompous of me, but I think you'll see why it might be justified, at least in one cat's eyes. 

So this morning Ripley and Sibu were being annoying. Audrey rarely meows, and I've never heard her complain for food, but a couple months ago Ripley and Sibu had gotten to the point where they meowed LOUDLY and PITEOUSLY and PERSISTENTLY in the morning until they got fed. Mom responded as any intelligent being with an IQ so high she won't disclose it: she started feeding the cats at night. It worked pretty quickly, and the boys stopped complaining (even if they do still follow me in the morning hoping I'll forget and feed them again!).

But this morning they were being completely obnoxious. Sibu was following me around meowing at the top of his lungs, and Ripley was being loud, too, though I figured he was up outside Mom's door. I got a drink and settled in on the couch with Dad, occasionally responding to the meows with one of my own (quite good) or a short, "Shut up." 

Finally, after an hour, Dad asked if Ripley was shut in the basement. Yes, he was. And what do you know, as soon as I let Ripley out, both cats stopped meowing. Ripley proceeded to be the cuddliest I've ever seen him, crawling all over me and Dad, rubbing his face in ours, the very picture of feline gratefulness. Audrey watched the display disdainfully from her perch on top of the cable box. 

So that made me feel nice, if a bit stupid for not thinking of the basement sooner. That's what I love about pets--it's so gratifying to know that you can quite easily make something else so happy. Now Ripley's curled up on Dad's legs, completely blissed out and warm.

Oh man, I hope this doesn't become a cat blog!

Other than that, not too much to report this week. I went to a job fair on Thursday. Nothing very promising for me, but it was a good experience, since I'd never been to one before. And yesterday I helped get a couple books ready for office-wide release. Mom and Dad and I started watching House of Cards on Netflix, and we're loving the political intrigue.

Sorry I misled you all with that first, arty post. There should be some more interesting and varied blog posts coming up. The middle of March is filling up with events:

• 15: My birthday (I'd rather ignore it this year, but I've been informed that won't happen)
• 16: First installment of BBC radio's adaptation of Neil Gaiman's book Neverwhere
• 17: St. Patrick's Day
• 18: BBC's third season of Sherlock starts filming (not actually all that excited, but it's bound to make the Tumblrs I follow blow up)

So sit tight until something more exciting happens. Or better yet, enjoy your own, undoubtedly more interesting lives. 8-)

The Boys Being Adorable

Ripley likes to look after his old uncle...at least, he does when he's not tackling Sibu like a feline vampire.

First Post: A Bookly Day

Well hello again! Or, if we haven't met, welcome! 

I don't have any fancy plans for this blog. Mostly I just want to get myself posting a little something at least once a week, just to keep my creative juices flowing. This shouldn't be as intense as my Morocco blog, though--more like the little notes I used to post on DeviantArt and FaceBook. 

On that note...let's begin! 

Yesterday was full of books. You might not think that's remarkable, since I am interning at a university press, but I don't usually handle many physical books myself. (More on that later.) However, last week kicked off an office-wide Spring cleaning spree that resulted in a tower of to-be-donated old computers and piles of broken office organizers, crumbling and outdated encyclopedias, bags of trash from the backs of desk drawers, and paper--lots and lots of paper. Wish I'd been there the day they brought in the "industrial shredder."

With cleanliness restored, it was time to zero in on more specific tasks. Yesterday, one unfortunate but brave and determined young employee recruited four interns to help him perform a monumental task: organize the conference room library! 

Since part of our mission was to ensure that a copy of every book published in the last five years was present, I'm guessing the library had been neglected about that long...though I might have just as easily guessed that from the amount of dust! Four of us worked on putting new books onto the shelves in alphabetical order while the fifth cleared a section at a time to clean the shelves. Once the books were put away, we got lists of books that should be present and noted which ones were missing. I put together the final list of missing books--over four hundred--and we started an office-wide treasure. I didn't get too far before quittin' time, but I'm guessing there will still be work to do on Monday. 

The wordy goodness continued when I met up with Dad at the Museum of Modern Art after work. I got a membership to the MOMA last year that I've been taking advantage of here and there before and after interviews, but this was the first time I got to bring a guest. After seeing the big square of pollen, we decided to target the special exhibits, one of which focused on Dieter Roth, whose artistic experiments often involved books and, to some extent, language. No wonder I found it so interesting! The big hit was definitely the Literaturwurst, which the artist made by following a traditional recipe for sausage...but replacing the meat with ground up books!

There was also an interesting stamp project that looked a bit more like a book. Roth made a stamp for every letter of the alphabet - just random pictures, nothing to indicate whether or not they represented a letter or a sound. One was a heart, one the outline of a bicyclist, one an odd goblin-like face, and so on. His intention was that anyone who used the stamps would give each one a value for each of the four ways it could be positioned--right side up, upside down, or on either side. How you stamped them would then indicate the kind of sentence you might form. So the two hearts in the photo below, for instance, could mean four different things. If we said the words were "four" for the side ways heart and "cat" for the upside down one, you might have a sentence that said something about four cats. But if you turned it 45 degrees clockwise, you'd have an upside down heart and a sideways heart facing the other direction, which would mean something entirely different--the four would be involved, but it could be in a very different way. It's a bit hard to explain. Sorry I couldn't find any bigger images. Anyway, it sounded like a great class activity for an early grammar lesson--have each child design a stamp, assign the stamps random words, and have children stamp combinations. Then pass them around and have the children come up with sentences based on the words. They would all be quite different--and probably fun! But you'd be able to point out that without rules of grammar and spelling, you leave so much work for your reader to do in order to grasp the fact of what you're saying that they can't focus on understanding what you're saying. If nothing else, it'd be a fun craft/creative exercise. 



I also thought of a great art/oral history project. First, make the modern art and put it in an exhibit. Hide microphones and record the varied reactions of visitors, then do something with the words. Wouldn't that be fun? It could certainly make a great installation. Hmm, maybe if the publishing thing doesn't work out I should pursue a career as an artist...