Dennys you shouldn't have

Dear reader, I have a confession. I was tempted into sin by that bright red and yellow sign gleaming in the dark…let me tell you the story.
Long before I decided to try being a vegan for 25 days a girlfriend and I had planned on going to Yosemite in September. This past weekend she, my husband and I went up to Yosemite and had a fabulous time. The park was comparatively empty, the weather was cooperative and we generally just had a good time taking in the sights as we hiked through the park.
I had some worries that I might not find much to eat but was reassured when I took a look at the Ahwahnee hotels lunch menu. I had a perfectly nice roasted vegetable sandwich and the chef withheld the cheese normally added to the sandwich. We decided to not eat dinner in the park in order to give the driver sat least some daylight on the return trip. We left at 6:30 and at 8:00 p.m. we were all pretty hungry. We had passed through several small towns and finally in Oakdale we decided to stop. Since it was comparatively late in the evening and we were so famished we stopped at the first restaurant we spotted which happened to be Dennys. I knew that Dennys had recently gotten some bad press after having added some horrendously huge calorie laden items to their menu but I figured I’d be able to at least eat a salad. However, all the salads I saw on the menu had meat of some sort including those salads on their new fit fare menu. I could have probably asked that the meat items not be included but I was cranky and hungry, the waitress was tired and probably hungry so …I succumbed. I knew not to go whole hog as it were so I stuck to having 2 pieces of French toast. I have to confess it was pretty tasty too. I then went hell for broke and ordered a piece of French silk pie. The pie actually tasted pretty nasty to me so I stopped after a few bites.
I do know how I could have prevented my lapse into vegetarianism. I could have bought fruits, nuts etc with me so that I wouldn’t have gotten too hungry but I was afraid that while we were in the park a bear might take a liking to my snacks and either break into my car or, if I had the food on me, decide I was a tasty snack waiting to happen. So I left the foodstuffs at home. The other thing I could have done would have been to check out one of the many vegan websites to see what their recommendations were for eating vegan at Dennys. It turns out that there are vegan choices at Dennys including a true vegan burger as well as oatmeal, potatoes, bagels etc. However, because I was so hungry I let it get the better of me. I never saw those items on the menu but I bet they are on there. So lesson learned – either keep decent snacks with me or do better research next time.

Hubby lives - vegan for three days and counting

Both hubby and I have survived for three days on our new “regime.” It was a close call our first night when I made vegan migas (recipe to be found here if interests you http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/vegan_migas.html) but didn’t really follow the recipe closely enough and dang near burned out the back of my throat. A word of warning, the combination of adobo and Serrano peppers, not a good thing. It then continued to be touch and go when I turned to a frozen soy meat analog dish and himself mentioned that I was already eating meat. A little crochety from burning my throat out with the Serrano peppers I kept pointing at the box and shrieking “meatless, see right here it says meatless”. The downhill trend continued when he decided to consume peanut M&Ms in front of me. He, going the vegetarian route can have them but I can’t. Haven’t men learned by now that chocolate is sacred and should not be consumed lightly in front of those who can’t have it?
Both the hubby and I had a few misconceptions before I decided to follow the vegan lifestyle for 25 days so I’d like to address a few of them.
Going vegan is healthy –
Well, yes and no. Remember when I mentioned that Boulder potato chips were vegan? So is a lot of other junk food including some foods aimed directly at vegans. Tofurcky anyone? BTW, purely in the interests of science, I tried a whole foods vegan donut. It wasn’t bad but a bit oily, and definitely not healthy.
If one were to go on a low fat, unprocessed diet that is completely plant-based then, yes, vegan is healthy. One word of caution even here though. If you have a thyroid condition, some plant based elements (goitrogens) including soy and cruciferous vegetables are considered to be toxic to thyroid patients. Not all experts feel this is true but it is something to think about.
As long as you are not eating meat, dairy or eggs you are eating vegan, right?
I certainly thought so and was surprised to learn that many vegans also don’t use honey. Planet Green has a good explanation here http://planetgreen.discovery.com/food-health/reason-vegans-honey.html. I was also surprised when I started reading labels how many otherwise “healthy” foods use honey. So far I’ve yet to find a non pumpernickel bread I can eat. Fortunately Thomas New York style bagels are vegan so I’ll use them for a snack. As an aside, pumpernickel bread, which I love, is very hard to find here in California. I’ve only ever found cocktail sized pumpernickel. Other ingredients I now need to look for on labels are casein and whey which are milk by-products (duh, curds and whey)
Eating Vegan is boring
Okay, I’m not going to lie, for me it probably is going to be boring. Remember I don’t really like a lot of fruits and veg but for those people with more enlightened palates there are tons of recipes out there and if you actually follow the instructions a lot of them look pretty darn good. The internet as a tool offers no excuses for boring. There are tons of recipe sites on the web along with many vegan organizations willing to answer questions so you should be able to eat meals with lots of variety.

Vegan for 25 days

Can a girl who hates fruits and vegetables become vegan for 25 days? Can her spouse survive?
On a lark I’ve decided to try and find out. After all, if former President Clinton, “Mr Fried Foods” can do it then I figure so can I. After all I did become a vegetarian for a year and a half and did pretty well, though I must confess the occasional hamburger was eaten during that time.
I’m curious to see how easy it really is to go vegan. I have no desire to permanently go vegan but all the vegan converts keep talking about how easy it is. However, these same people seem to be well… zealots. I’ve not really heard from the perspective of “I’m an ordinary Joe and yes it really is easy, or no it’s not all that easy and here are the problems” point of view. I hope to represent that point of view.
My ground rules are that from Sept.1 – Sept 25th
1. I’ll not eat the obvious: no meat, no dairy, no eggs, no honey. I will miss you butter…
2. I’ve got to eat like I normally eat, i.e. I use a lot of convenience foods during the week and cook on the weekends. Also vegan does not necessarily mean no junk food. Guess what? Boulder potato chips =vegan. Just sayin’
3. If I go to a restaurant I can’t cheat and eat meat just because I don’t see anything I like on the menu. However, I am also not going to interrogate the staff to determine if my tofu was fried on a grill separate from meat products either. I’m trying this as a possible life style choice and not a religious conversion type of thing.
I’m lucky that I live in the Bay Area. We seem to have, at least, a lot of vegetarian choices on the restaurant menus as well as several stores in the area that have a good selection of vegan frozen foods. In other words, even I may be fairly successful at going vegan.
There are also several websites that should help me in my quest such as http://www.isitvegan.com; eatingwell.com and PETAs website.
For those of you concerned about the spouse, he is not going vegan but he has been “strongly” encouraged to go vegetarian for the 25 days. After all eating a nice juicy steak in front of me could be hazardous to his health.
Finally, you may ask “why only 25 days” and not the widely promoted vegan for 30 days? The answer is that realistically I don’t think I can sustain being vegan after Sept 25th. ON Sept.26th I start my usual training regime for student library clerks and the days tend to be very long. Meals are generally taken in a haphazard fashion and I don’t want to faint in front of a freshman because I haven’t eaten in 12 hours. That tends to scare them.
Wish me luck….

Garden dreaming

My husband, mother in law, a friend and I all went to view a garden of a local artist/gardener in Berkeley a couple of weeks ago. I’d seen this woman’s work at the San Francisco home and garden show and had perused a couple of her books. I knew I’d be seeing lots of color as well as fanciful statuary but seeing them “in the flesh” is a whole different experience. Keeyla Meadows truly has not met a color she doesn’t like but more importantly she makes effective use of these colors. I also love her use of art work as well as a variety of different materials she uses in pavings and planting structures. She has a web site and if you love color check it out here http://www.keeylameadows.net/home/home.html
Her color suggestions are very similar to those used by various quilt instructors over the years. Alas do I ever follow these principles? The short answer is no. If I try to combine several different colors my garden tends to look, at best, disordered and, at worst, muddy. However, I’ve become so enamored of her style that I’ve decided to totally redo my back garden in the hopes that I might obtain a pale version of hers. Regretfully for the spouse this means lots of physical labor. Last weekend we started looking for boulders and found some. My husband’s valiant little four cylinder Nissan hauled the rocks home. Himself, with the help of a hoist, got the rocks off the truck and in the back yard in the approximate position that the rocks will ultimately go. Did I metnion that he moved over a ton (literally) of rock?

This past weekend I then got it into my head that we needed to amend our very clay like soil. Keeyla also has a recipe for “good soil” so we set off on a quest for the various ingredients. We discovered that commercial establishments such as Summer winds and Home Depot do not carry “loamy sand” 5/16”” lava and rock nor do they know what rice hulls are much less were to purchase them. It has finally warmed up in California so driving around in the truck looking for these things got a little “heated”. One lady in Osh was pretty sure the spouse was in trouble but I can assure her we were simply discussing types of sand. After a very hot 2 hours in the truck we came home disheartened. I, information specialist that I am, then turned to the internet. We have discovered where most of our ingredients are and next weekend I hope to obtain them. Stay tuned….

By Jove, I think she's got it.

By Jove I think I’ve got it.
I hate machine piecing or at least I did. I was always afraid that I was going to make too many mistakes and in the process ruin perfectly wonderful fabric. For years a friend has been trying to convert me to the dark side and even helped me make a lap quilt with really large half square triangles. This made me just comfortable enough that I thought I’d take a sampler class at my local quilt shop. After all, I knew that with my growing fabric hoard I had to start doing at least some quilts by machine or I, the cats and quite possibly the hubby would be swallowed whole. I don’t think the hubby would notice as he’d be too intent on his computer screen, but still..
The sampler class caused a resurfacing of all those fears I’d initially had and gone was the comfort level I’d obtained with the lap quilt my friend had helped me with. I became obsessed with that quarter inch seam and whether my 12 inch blocks would ever square up. I’d burst into tears and shriek at the hubby (who did notice) and really began to hate one of my favorite hobbies. I finished the class, finished my quilt and am happy to say it looks pretty good. I decided to persevere and try another quilt but on my own so I signed up for a block of the month type of deal and found that, as the months went on, I began to feel comfortable again. Yes, there are definite mistakes in the first three blocks but nothing that can’t be “repaired” with either a little extra strip of fabric or some carefully placed borderie perse. Some of my blocks now even fit the required 12 ½ inches and can be squared up. I feel like an absolute wiz with snowball/flying geese type units. While I can’t say that I’m having fun yet I have begun to enjoy the machine piecing process just a little. I’ve got three more blocks to go along with sashing so keep your fingers crossed for me. Amazingly I’ve started thinking about my next couple of quilts and, yes, I’ll be doing them by machine.
I will never be a total convert as evidenced by the fact that I’ve got several hand piecing projects in process but I can definitely see doing more and more quilts by machine! My friend will be so proud.
Postscript – after writing this I worked on block no.10 and 11. Block no.10 came together perfectly – block no.11, not so much. I was off by a whole quarter on one edge. I have no ruddy idea why as I worked on the blocks together, overly cocky maybe? Instead of ripping my hair out, I simply added a strip to the bottom. It ain’t pretty but it is a solution. Fingers crossed that block no. 12 comes together.
You can see from my early blocks that there are some boo boos but none too horribly bad.

Speculative fiction Reading challenge

I've just discovered that there is a speculative reading challenge for 2011 going on. It sounds like fun and since horror counts I think I might try it out. Since I've already forced a friend of mine to engage in a science fiction book reading club this might tie in nicely to what we are already doing as well. She won't read horror but is trying to turn me onto Iain Banks so I'll tr yin turn to get her to try the challenge.
It shouldn't be too hard to read 12 spec. fiction novels even this late in the game.
So let the fun begin....


Should you wish to join in follow the link below
"http://floor-to-ceiling-books.blogspot.com/2010/12/sign-up-speculative-fiction-reading.html"
So late May, early June is off to a good start
1. Blood Groove - technically a reread from 2009 but since I didn't remember it, it counts.
2. Zoo City - Lauren Beukes
3. The businessman - Thomas Disch
4. Embers - Laura Bickle
5. Ring of Solomon - Jonathan Stroud
6. Hull zero three - Greg Bear
7. one hundred thousand kingdoms - N.K. Jemisin
8. Midnight Riot Ben Aaronovitch
9. Amulet of Samarkand - Jonathan Stroud
10. Consider Phelbas - Iain M. Banks
11. Red pyramid = Rick Riordan
12. Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
13. Monstrumologist - Rick Yancey
14. Knife of never letting go - Patrick Ness
15. Outback stars - Sandra McDonald
16. Blood red road - Moira Young
17. Small gods - Terry Pratchett
18. When she woke - Hillary Jordan

Eye of the beholder

This may at first appear to be a slightly schizophrenic post about both weight/appearance and quilts but bear with me.
Two things happened almost within hours the other day and while not earth shattering it made me think, once again, about people’s perceptions. I and my middle aged exercise partners were walking toward the gym when two young, slender younger women walked past and I heard the inevitable “I’m so fat” comment. Instead of making me grit my teeth as these comments sometimes do I had a little laugh.
I had spoken with a good friend of mine the weekend before and we spoke of our perceptions of ourselves. She sees herself as a willowy tall blonde, I see myself as an elven flower child type. She’s’ got the tall but not willowy part down and I’ve got the short but not particularly elven part down yet both of us are pretty happy most of the time with how we look. As my friend and I age we become more and more optimistic about our looks. Maybe those young girls will too.
One thing that does make me angry though is when someone else looks at me and decides that because I’m short and stocky that I’m not very fit. I know how much time I invest in exercising and it’s not insubstantial so I tend to be a bit techy when someone looks at me and says something along the lines of “oh I don’t really think you should sign up for that ten mile hike” or “do you REALLY bike 12 miles a day?” Yep I do, don’t judge this book by its cover is my usual response.
After I left the gym I then went on to do some quilting with a couple of other people and, in this case, we quilters became the equivalent of those younger women. You should have heard us – “my applique isn’t looking very good, I messed up with the colors in this section….”So why are we so critical of our quilts? Come on, you know you’ve looked at a minute section of your quilt and been overly sensitive that a seam doesn’t match exactly, or your quilt stitched look too big or…? I ask, why can’t I and my quilty friends take the optimists view and love our quilts as is, perceived flaws and all?
Furthermore we also tend to be pretty judgmental of others work, especially at quilt shows. Do we really need to be that catty about someone else’s quilt? Just as I’ve worked hard to achieve a certain fitness level so, I suspect, have these women (and men) worked hard on their work. Maybe we should remember that next time instead of the fact that the quilt isn’t our cup of tea. Let’s be optimists and kinder individuals instead of negative nellies shall we?

Fitness for quilters … and all you other needlers too

Spring is afoot, though she does seem to be limping slightly, so it is time to turn our thoughts away from our machines and to think about ridding ourselves of our winter “ahem” stores.
There are many reasons why we should push ourselves away from the sewing table, to drop our knitting needles, shed our shuttles.
Perhaps the primary reason is that a healthy crafter is a productive crafter, that and I really don’t want my north forty to gain any more acreage if you know what I mean.
Exercise does more for us than just make us healthy though. It can energize us, it can inspire us. Just imagine what a half an hour’s walk can do for you. You might spot that perfect color to add to your quilt or see a heron take flight and envision creating that landscape quilt or tapestry.
If you walk with a friend you can brainstorm possible future projects and really get your blood pumping.
Stepping back from our machines also allows us to step back and remember that life is out there. The quilt police aren’t going to break down your door if you don’t get that last square done but go out and run with the dog instead. The knitting Nazis aren’t going to haul you off if you’ve only done three inches of knitting and then decide to go outside and weed the garden.
Our backs will also thank us if we stop every 20 – 30 minutes and get up and stretch, do squats ,what have you. The thing is if you step away for awhile, you may find that when you come back you have more energy, and to be quite frank , a little more joy when you resume your project. If you are like me, sometimes I begin to view my craft as just another chore…I’ve got to get three more squares done, 2 more quilts done by…type of mentality instead of just enjoying myself. If I just stop for a while and go out and bike around the neighborhood I feel much better and I start to have fun with my quilting again. It’s amazing what an effusion of oxygen will do for the brain!
So, I say to you, my breather. When the sun does finally come out in your neck of the woods, go out and enjoy it. Your fabric, yarn etc. will wait for you.

It's fantasy, not a dating manual

There has been much discussion in the past few years over the portrayal of young women and their romantic entanglements in young adult fiction. Two of the most hotly contested series are the Twilight series and the Hunger Games series. Many women feel that Bella is a weak girl interested only in obtaining her happily ever after with Edward. She has no desire to go to college, have a career or become a person in her own right. She simply wants to be with Edward.
Katniss Everdeen on the other hand has fought in several ferocious battles and is very much a strong young woman. Yet she too has romantic entanglements and is torn between the classic best friend versus the kind boy who has always loved her. Many people think the author copped out by having Katniss indeed decide between the two and settle down with one of these two young men.
I am more sympathetic to the point in the Twilight series that this is perhaps an unrealistic portrayal for young women to have, that one person can fulfill all your needs and desires and that you don’t need to be a person complete in and of yourself. However I’d argue that this is an unrealistic expectation for any person, including young men. Edward sets the bar fairly high attentiveness wise.
I do think that people are overreacting a bit to the Twilight series though. There are a couple of things that bother me, the first being that all women must fit a certain mold and that if she doesn’t fit in that mold there is something wrong with her. If she isn’t strong and kickass then she is flawed in some way.
Secondly as much as we would all like a book to be life changing they very rarely are. Peer pressure will have far more to do with how young girls form their first romantic relationships. Most of the young women I know get that this is fantasy. They know perfectly well that very few men are going to attentively inquire after their thoughts and feelings and live in an angst like state in denying their feelings for the object of their desire. It is somewhat insulting that the inference is that these girls are so weak minded (Bella like?) that they cannot make up their own minds and form their own opinions as to whether this is the type of romance they would like to have.
Somewhat more puzzling for me is the vehement wish that Katniss had not “settled” for a man. I do not understand why, after all that Katniss had endured, anyone would deny her the love and company of another human being. To my way of thinking Katniss did not settle for Peeta. She instead chose to be with the one other person who as fellow survivor could understand all that she had gone through. Would the reader have preferred that Katniss live alone, becoming more and more like Haymitch as the years went by? Why can’t we have our happy endings in our fantasies or realities for that matter? Who would not want that ending?

summer vacation

Driven by the fear that one of my in-laws (or worse one of my friends) will nominate me for one of those hoarding programs I cleaned my house for my summer vacation. I did a fairly good job of ridding the closet and chest of drawers of old clothes as I never have really had attachments to clothing. After calculating that I will probably only read another 1,350 books I even winnowed the bookcases of books I will never read. I was slightly less successful at paring down my fabric stash but I still managed a respectable 2 ½ bags worth. What has me flummoxed though are a couple of old address books.
One of these belonged to my mother. I already know all the addresses of the people I need to so I am not sure why I can’t simply throw this one into recycle. Maybe it is because if I do it is one less link I have with her. My mother always had beautiful handwriting and it is the last thing of hers that still has her handwriting in it. Maybe it is because I watched one too many of those find your ancestors shows where they talk about finding a diary etc. that prevents me from throwing it away. Regardless of the reason why though I have left it on its shelf for now.
The second address book is one I had in high school and I look at some of the names and have absolutely no idea who some of these people were. It is kind of fun for me to see the name of my old freshman crush or to remember that my good friend in high school had the same birthday as my dad or to try and remember just who Debbie Williams was or why I would have known anyone in Iowa back in the 80s. I’ll keep this one for the puzzle value for awhile but it will be easier to dispose of it once the novelty has worn off. It is rather frightening though to know that old age has crept in to an extent that I no longer remember old friends. It makes me wonder what else I’ll eventually forget. Maybe this is why we keep so much stuff, they work as mnemonic aids. We’ll see if, in another twenty years, I remember any of the names at all.

Plus sized; Stilettos

So Ms. Crabby pants is back. I’m in one of those moods where I just want to walk up to someone and scream “what if wrong with you people”.
Why am I in this mood? I was in the gym slogging away on the stair stepper and perusing a gossip magazine I came across an article about a plus size model whose photos were digitally altered to make her look very thin. The photographer’s response, “Well I’m paid to make her beautiful’. Evidently anyone over a size two is not beautiful. Now the irony was that this 5’ 9” model weighs 150 lbs and looks pretty darned good in a bikini. 150 lbs on someone that height is considered mildly overweight if one has a small frame and just fine if one’s frame is larger. So this annoyed me but I figured that this was a fluff piece designed to take up space. After all most of us tend to be this woman’s weight if not height and believe it or not don’t consider ourselves to be plus sized.
Then I moved down to the free weight area which, for some reason, has a television set. I should have just done my reps and ignored it but no…. The program that was on was some “so you want to be a model type thing.” Naomi Campbell was holding up an obscenely high pair of heels and saying something about athletes. I foolishly thought she was going to say something along the lines of “athletes don’t wear these things because it destroys their feet’…Nope she was saying that athletes play through their pain and so should these aspiring models. These poor things literally could not hobble across the floor in these shoes and looked absolutely crushed as the panel critiqued their runway skills. I kept waiting for one of them to take the shoes off and scream “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore”. Alas evidently no one had ever seen Network much less thought that perhaps they should inhabit the real world instead of having their self esteem and souls destroyed by a bunch of collagen injected has beens.
Here’s hoping that one day we will all (me included) learn to obsess less over weight and appearance and learn to just live healthy. In the meanwhile I must lift a few more weights to burn off my annoyance.

Welcome to quiltland

My father and his wife came for a visit last week and while they were here I was showing off some of my quilts.
As I continued to show them what i had done I realized that, for them, I was speaking a foreign language. Since I have been in quilter world for so long I had forgotten how alien it must be for people who don't quilt.
First we had to discuss why I had sooo much fabric. Explaining that my stash was kinda small in comparison to some had no effect. Neither did the “its sort of like paints for an artist, you wouldn’t expect an artist to just have two colors of paint” explanation work. I didn’t even attempt to describe the fabulous high garnered from stroking my fabric stash. No sense in them having to feel they needed to stage an intervention.
While everyone recognizes that quilts can indeed be beautiful I could tell that the cutting up of perfectly good fabric into small pieces and then reassembling them was something they would truly never really get. A trip to one of my favorite quilt shops was a little constrained as I knew a large purchase would also be met with confusion; remember I already have all this fabric in the closet. So alas I came away with a one yard cut of fabric for a fall project. While I certainly enjoyed their visit I’ve learned my lesson. Next time I shop and share only with other people living in quiltland.

Best author you are not reading

A few weeks ago I went into my local public library to the section where the short stories had been housed only to discover that the section had disappeared. When I queried the librarian I was told that no one reads short fiction and that the materials had been moved into the main fiction section.
I thought to myself , if no one reads short fiction then why do magazines like the New Yorker continue to publish it?
So, with this fact in mind the best author you are not reading is a gentleman by the name of Paolo Bacigalupi. Yes, I know, perhaps it’s his name that is the problem. If you can’t pronounce it much less spell it, it is pretty hard to ask for him in a bookstore or library.
He has the most fabulous collection of short stories. Most of the time after I’ve read something I tend to forget what I’ve read a few days later. I read this particular collection of short stories about six months ago and at least two of the stories remain vivid in my mind. They are science fiction but please don’t let this stop you. Go ahead try something different. Dive into these works and experience these meticulously crafted stories. Some of them will disturb you but I can guarantee that you won’t be bored.

Luddite quilter

I am a long time quilter, I started quilting in 1984. Back in the day we used plastic templates and a lot, though not all of us hand pieced our quilts. I was and am a happy hand piecer. I love making quilts and while none of them will ever win a prize most of my quilts look pretty good. I find the quilting process to be soothing and almost zen like. However a friend persuaded me to take a quilting class by machine. I needed to spring forth into the 21sr century, she said. I had too much fabric and would never use even a tenth of it unless I learned to machine piece, she said. It’s easy to learn, she said.
So I signed up for and recently completed a ten week course beginning machine piecing quilt class billed as a “fun” class. All I can say is that I did not have fun. I had nightmares, I broke down into crying jags, my cats hid and my spouse almost divorced me. My only consolation was that another student in the class also had the same symptoms and that we both survived.
Some evenings striving for the elusive perfect ¼ inch seam so that my quilt block would “square up” seemed to me to be akin to being on the front lines in a war zone with no knowledge on how to shoot a gun or, in my case, operate my sewing machine. I lived in a constant state of terror and stress. On a rare occasion I’d get a block right and it was if I’d just come in first in the New York marathon. Most nights were not like this. Most nights were spent sobbing, pleading and bargaining with my machine. Being heartless it ignored me.
The experience has led me to the following conclusions
1. If I use two ply thread I may attempt a machine pieced wall hanging. The fabric I use will be quite ugly so I will not have to sorrow after my beautiful fabrics lost in a bizarre and senseless death under the rotary cutter’s blade.
2. Most of my quilts will continue to be made via hand and anyone worried about my excessive fabric may remain mum on the subject.
3. Zen like states cannot be achieved at the machine though a dangerous rise in blood pressure can. Somehow I think this info could be used in a good murder mystery plot …
So I’m about to begin a queen sized churn dash and a little part of me is thinking…churn dash is pretty straight forward. I could piece this on the machine but then I look at the trusting face of the one cat who finally ventured out from under the couch and think nah…. Somebody has to be the last hand piecer in the world and I’m okay with that.

Book club snob

I have belonged to book clubs off and on for several years and finally found one that fits me. I’ll have to admit it is all women which is quite the change from some of the testosterone book clubs I’ve been in. Book clubs are much like any other group meeting and I’ll be sexist and say it men tend to dominate more than women.
Even in our nice “little ladies who sew “book club though there will always be one or two opinionated individuals who speak more than others, and, I admit, sometimes that person is me. (Okay it is frequently me and I know I annoy others….)There is going to be the person who just wants everyone to get along and who only wants to hear nice things about the book and, a bit more socializing than perhaps would be tolerated in other book clubs also occurs.
Our books tend to fall into "Oprah" inspirational, you should be getting a message from this book"; women's fiction; or theme books of some sort. World War II seems to be a recurring theme. I don’t know if this is because there are just a lot of WWII books out there or if we tend to gravitate more to that type of historical fiction. Rarely though are the books going to be ones that will survive the test of time, that will continue to be read and discussed into the next century and I’m afraid this is where my snobbishness shows. You may legitimately shake a finger at the self professed genre reader ( I know zombie books, how can I be a snob?) but I always feel a little like I’m slumming with the Jody Picoult and the Jennifer Chiaverini type books.
However, I have a confession to make, sometimes even though we aren’t reading Dostoyevsky or James Joyce I still find one or two of the books that really move me. I forget to be a snobby little snot and simply become engrossed in a story. One of those was the Book Thief and another was last month’s selection The Help. I know this book will be forgotten in 20 years but the author made the characters seem so alive I didn’t want the book to end, I wanted to continue to peer into their lives until I knew everything about them, what they’d be like in 10 years, if they would survive the changes they were undergoing. The story is basically about three women, two black and one white in a small Southern town in the early 1960s. The two women are maids and the white woman persuades these women to tell stories about their working life and by doing so exposing the cruelties done to other human beings based solely on the color of their skin. Some of the things done are so difficult to believe that you think “well this is fiction” and yet the author forces you to understand that these horrible things did happen just through the use of simple narrative on the part of the characters.
I guess what I’m trying to say is read this book, don’t be like me and be a little snot and think that just because a book is a best seller does not mean that it is merit-less. You may very well find a diamond in amongst the rhinestones. Even if you don't maybe you'll still just have a good read and sometimes that's enough.

Anticipation

The past week has been a rainy blustery sort of week which, for this time of year, is not all that unusual.
There was something about this past week though that reminded me of my childhood Marchs spent in Colorado. Perhaps it was the high wind or the sly promises of sun.
When I was little I looked forward to spring the way many small children looked forward to Christmas. I hated being cold. I also hated the lack of any discernable color. Winters in Colorado are ugly. Don't let anyone sell you a picture postcard full of gentle white mounds of snow and lacy snowflakes floating down. The reality is that we have thin dry snow, so no pretty lacy snowflakes, which melts quickly once the sun does come out. It also means slushy dirty streets, bare patches of dried dun colored grasses and bare spindly trees. Everywhere there is that ugly, nasty dun color, not a spot of color to be seen.
Every year though I knew that at the end of March, the beginning of April there would be a warm spell. I'd watch for it, my whole body quivering with the promise of warmth. When that warm spell hit (a warm spell being anything over 45 degrees) I'd run outside, sit on my front stoop and watch our Ash tree in the front yard start to bud with that wonderful chartreuse green that all young growth seems to have. I’d scour the ground in my mother’s flower bed to get the first glimpse of grape hyacinth. I'd sit there until my mother hollered at me to come in and put on a jacket before I caught my death of a cold but still I'd sit until the stoop began to cool as the sun moved on its way.
As an adult, living in Northern California, I don't get to have that heightened sense of anticipation, that sense that something is going to change , that there is going to be a little magic in the air. There is always color here even on the greyest day. Like the child who knows Santa isn't real, the exquisiteness of the anticipation is gone. Don't get me wrong, I still tear into my present of sunshine as I watch the daffodils and freesia come up but with just a hint of jadedness as I sit on my front stoop and that's too bad.

The formula novel

The cranky one has a bone to pick with …silly book reviewers. First repeat after me "it is okay to read formula novels". The literature police will not come for you. Even they realize that formula novels can be great entertainment and lots of fun.
I recently read a novel that I felt was a very good example within its genre which happens to be the thriller novel. I began to read some other readers reviews and many of them criticized the novel for being formulaic. Well duh, Of course it is formulaic, many novels within genres are. (BTW don't spam me for this comment, yes I know that there are novelists who do bring originality to their work within various genres)
Mystery novels generally have a murder, a sleuth, and the resolution to the murder; romance novels have two protagonists who may initially hate one another but initially fall in love and then have a happily ever after. Many people read the same author because they know there will be familiar motifs with the works of the aforesaid author.
I myself enjoy Robert Crais because I know Elvis is going to be conflicted, Pike is going to be enigmatic and that there will be at least one really good shootout.
If you are going to review a novel within a formula then critique writing, character development ete. Formula authors can fall flat and its perfectly fine to point out problems, just don’t trash the book because it is exactly what it purports to be.

nostalgia

This past weekend I indulged in two separate yet entertaining types of activities that brought back a wave of nostalgia.
On Saturday my husband and I took my mother in law to the Monterey Bay aquarium as she had not been there before. The current exhibits of the seahorses are awesome by the way! Joe Bob says check it out. We then took seventeen mile drive over to Carmel and it was this combination that made me nostalgic. I’ve taken both my parents and a wide variety of friends to these spots over the years and it was fun to try and remember who I was with when we saw the tide pools, where that little shop was where they used to sell folk art rugs, where my ten year old nephew (now in his thirties yikes!) swam for hours etc.
Then today we went and saw the new Star Trek movie. I had a lot of trepidation going in as I’m a hardcore trekker from way back. I remember watching it when I was probably no older than six or seven initially. I had some of the lines memorized and to this day one of my college roommates still does. Yes I am and was a geek and used to get pounded regularly for it. Funny how those folks who used to make fun of Star Trek now also remember it fondly.
In any case I didn’t think I was going to enjoy a reimagining of the myth but it turns out for the most part I did. I loved Simon Pegg as Scotty and wished that he had been introduced sooner, Anton Yelchin was fun as Chekov and I think I now have a crush on Karl Urban’s McCoy (Sorry Deforest). I wasn’t so excited with Chris Pine as Kirk nor with the underlying relationship of Spock and Uhura. The movie did lots of little references back to the original and overall it was a fun way to sort of revisit a past favorite. Do go in with a totally open mind and just go with the reimagining, trying to get this movie to mesh with the other treks my cause a headache. Oh, and as I told my friend who actually lives in Iowa just laugh and ignore the fact that they didn’t get it right.

ETSY

Discovering a new way to spend money in these hard financial times is wrong, correct? What if, by spending your money, you would be helping small local artists?
I love handmade things, especially those things that are a little folk arty and or have an originality to them.
Unfortunately for my wallet, I have discovered Etsy and... there are a whole lot of talented folks on this website. I got sucked into the art section and haven't been able to find my way out. For those of you not so interested in art check out the other categories. Yes, there is some amateurish stuff but, overall, I've found some very nice, authentic pieces and frequently reasonably priced. Who knows, maybe one day my stuff will be up there and you can then support another local artist!

zombies as love interests, really?

Alright first of all I've got a bone to pick. I like being scared so badly my hair practically turns white so I am not real excited at the way things have gone for some of my favorite horror archetypes..
In the past several years romance writers have taken the horrific out of a variety of horrific and/or mythical figures (vampires, werewolves, demons etc) and turned them into fluffy harmless objects e.e.angels. This begs the questions as to why the angels had to tell the shepherds “be not afraid” if they are so cute and cuddly…
In some cases it's not all fluff, a little bit of the cruelty remains but then a tortured soul is added so that our heroine can “save” the love object or, if they are the being in question, be saved. Hollywood had a lot to do with the shift in image and writers followed suit and began to change the mythos to make these beings more palatable.
Some of the changes are kind of ooky. In a lot of these stories there is also an underlying wife beater element to them. He bit too hard or he crushed my ribs turning into a werewolf but he didn’t really mean it. Let's ignore this aspect for the time being as that could turn into a disseration for some enterprising English major. So way do these reformed archetypes appeal? As a general rule there is not only the tortured being angle but there are the good looks, charm and in many case wealth that goes along with these types. So if you are fifteen (or fifteen in spirit which many adult women seem to be)you develop a little crush.
However, zombies are well zombies. To start with they are dead and not just dead but rotting, meat falling off the bones dead. They generally have no other thought processes other than to eat you. They don’t have any higher brain function left. No time for romance when there is always a primordial hunger to eat flesh. Even with some of the conventions being bent in modern movie making – they are fast, they have basic reasoning skills etc it is still a huge stretch to understand how they can be made into love objects. I could actually read one of these books but…
I’m not sure I can take the plunge and have the whole zombie allure thing ruined for me. I like being scared silly and just don’t want the thrill of being scared to death ruined with thoughts of zombies sucking face not to eat someone but to lurve them, bleech! Puleeze people leave my zombies be!