Isabel will be home for 19 hours tomorrow and I CAN’T WAIT.
Pictured here many years ago in a dress Mamie made with this really beautiful raw silk fabric.
Read more…
Archive Posts (Page 40)
I’m thinking of getting a home equity line of credit. I’d like to buy a new SUV. What are the best hiking boots?
Nah, just kidding. Just screwing with Facebook’s ad algorithms.
My house is like the house in Poltergeist except instead of murderous intent, it just wants to mildly annoy whoever lives in it.
I’m unwittingly eavesdropping on a Century Link guy interviewing another guy for a direct sales position. The conversation is funny on a lot of levels, but my favorite part was this:
What we do is we deal in fiber optics. Do you know what that means? Fiber optics is super advanced technology that makes basically everything possible. Like you know Google right? Like they do all this amazing stuff like smart glasses and self driving cars, right?
Read more…
What would be awesome is for my water heater to break and leak water everywhere and soak through the walls and into my closet on the day I’m showing my house for the first time.
The Five Phases Of Being Home While Your Family Is Away on Vacation
- Ahh, silence. So nice.
- My bed feels a little empty but boy is it quiet.
- My kingdom for a little background arguing.
- Can’t stop browsing old photographs.
- Kleenex commercials now make me cry.
In Rabindranath Tagore’s short story Cabuliwallah, I find this description of Sophia’s fictional twin:
My five year old daughter Mini cannot live without chattering. I really believe that in all her life she has not wasted a minute in silence. … To see Mini quiet is unnatural, and I cannot bear it long. And so my own talk with her is always lively. from Cabuliwallah by Rabindranath Tagore It is such a good story too.
Read more…
Does anybody close by have a tart pan I can borrow tomorrow (Thursday)? I swear I kept one out when I was packing away non-essentials but I can’t find it for the life of me. They must all be in a box buried deep in storage.
The lovely Sarah P. Duke Gardens at Duke University with my pal Chris. Thinking of you today, aunt Mary Greist :)
Read more…
My favorite encounter in Mexico:
Waiter: “Are you from England?”
Me: “No, Phoenix.”
Waiter: “Oh, ok. I was just hoping could tell me World Cup results.”
I know some of my friends will enjoy these pictures. Congratulations to my perfect partner Jesse and his perfect bride Brittani. I love these people.
Me and my little tiny people.
Read more…
Sophie graduated from elementary school today. This has been her home away from home most of her life so it was bitter-sweet. These two teachers (and 1st - 3rd’s Miss Lori and Miss Mary not pictured) have had such an impact on her life.
Thank you.
Read more…
This Facebook Posting Couldn’t Live Up To Its Promise, But It Used A Technique You Won’t Believe To Reap Attention.
The conclusion of Judge McShane’s opinion overruling Oregon’s same sex marriage ban is beautifully argued and written. (Actually the whole thing is beautifully argued, but the conclusion is particularly sincere.)
(Source: Link)
CONCLUSION:
I am aware that a large number of Oregonians, perhaps even a majority, have religious or moral objections to expanding the definition of civil marriage (and thereby expanding the benefits and rights that accompany marriage) to gay and lesbian families.
Read more…
Friday Fun Fact: There were two posts in a row on my Facebook page this morning titled “Friday Fun Fact”.
Today I Learned:
Me: Did you tell your mom Happy Mother’s Day?
Yamilet: No, I’m Mexican.
Me: Uh, what does that have to do with anything? You can still wish her a happy Mother’s Day.
Yamilet: Mexican Mother’s Day was yesterday.
Huh. The more you know.
My movie dates today killing time before Captain America. These are three really awesome young ladies.
Read more…
Just dropped Sophia off at school for her big Sixth Year Presentation on the Galilean Moons of Jupiter. She’s been working on this all year and is super excited. In fact this conversation happened while she was getting ready:
Sophia: I’m so excited!
Me: Can you hide it?
Sophia: No.
Me: Are you about to lose control?
Sophia: Yes.
Me: Do you like it?
Sophia: I think.
You may be wondering why she’s wearing a men’s suit.
Read more…
One of the stranger phone calls I’ve taken this week.
[Ring ring]
Me: Hello?
Caller: May I speak with Geoffrey please?
Me: This is Geoff.
Caller: Michael asked me to tell you to be at McDowell and 33rd at 11:00.
Me: I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Caller: Is this Geoffrey?
Me: Yes.
Caller: You spoke with Michael last week. From McDowell and 33rd? He’d like you there at 11:00.
Read more…
Found this delightfully passive aggressive bullet point in the Prom dress code document from Isabel’s school:
“Ties, waistcoats, and cummerbunds may be colored, if you really think that’s a good idea.”
All I got from this is that 1000 people are killed by crocodiles each year. If I ever get eaten in a dream it is always a crocodile. Man I hate those primitive monsters.
Read more…
An old Michael Silverblatt interview in which (among other things) Art Spiegelman seems to argue that reality tv is the opposite of literature in the sense that reality tv argues that reality is just stories, and literature argues that stories are real.
Also, let it be said that Daniel Handler is one of my favorite author interviewees.
Does anybody have a recommendation for a house painter? Exterior. Thanks!
“According to Iger, Disney believes it now has the cultural cachet to make its most misogynist movie in years, perhaps by going back to a female lead whose life is empty, unfulfilling, and valueless until the moment she receives true love’s first kiss.”
Tee hee hee.
Pardon me while I gush a bit. Isabel (a Sophomore no less) won the poetry competition at their high school this week with this beautiful poem:
RAINY NIGHT
pulls the light from the air
and pools it on the street.
Man is tidy and precise in raising up his cities.
Rain freely creates,
giving liberty to man’s rigidity.
She reflects man’s world
more beautifully than he deserves,
transforming those highly regular things
Read more…
I can’t believe poor people are letting their children graze on federal food stamps. Wait, I think I still have this story wrong. It is so confusing.
Just dropped these two self-assured young people off for dinner out and a night around town.
Happy birthday, Hailey!
Read more…
I’m at my mechanic’s (of 15 years) for an oil change and a pipe burst this weekend so his waiting room is out of commission. Turns out he lives next door to the shop so I’m now sitting in his living room. He has car seats retrofitted as couches and chairs. There’s also an art display on the wall of rectangles covered in different patterned car upholstery.
This guy is such a car nerd and I love it.
Read more…
Me: “Phoenix Dance Academy. I’ve never seen that before. I wonder what it is.”
Isabel: “I’m going to guess it’s an academy that teaches dance in Phoenix.”
Hrmph.
Watching the Twelfth Night movie with Sophia tonight so she can follow along better when we see it at Isabel’s school tomorrow.
Read more…
4 or 5 years ago Sophia proudly announced that she was “made” on April 8th. This she determined because she was told the average gestation period for a human, and did some calendar work to figure it out. Ever since then she has been quite proud of her “conception date” (hence the cake she made today). This is terribly embarrassing when she brings it up in polite company but I don’t have the heart to tell her to stop.
Read more…
Isabel sang a beautiful solo at their district combined choir concert this weekend. I would tell you what they sang but I don’t know. Anyway, it was lovely and complicated and they were picked by the guest director because of their “good tone” which made my day :)
Facebook: “You may like these pages”
Me: “YOU DON’T KNOW ME…Hmm, actually that does look interesting.”
Sophia was prattling on about all her April Fools plans today so on the drive to school I convinced her that April Fools isn’t a real thing, I’ve never heard of it, and it is probably something they just do at her school. I could see here whole world crumbling around her as she tried to make sense of this new reality. I don’t think I would have convinced her until I called Mamie on speakerphone and explained the debate.
Read more…
Click “LIKE” if you too are above clicking like just because a post tells you to.
Ok, people. This is an emergency. Where can I buy awesome hotdog buns now?
“We are going to go on slowly, quietly, hand in hand, the three of us, never giving up.”
What a lovely little thing.
Mamie and I have been in a month-long game of chicken where we agree to go somewhere “in a minute” and then later one of us says, “Ok I’m ready when you are” and the other says “Ok let’s go” and then we both keep working and nobody actually goes anywhere.
I know AZ SB-1062 can be confusing and divisive, so I made this flowchart to help everyone make sense of exactly what the law does and does not do. For science.
Read more…
On Friday afternoon Sophia asked me “What does the 4th dimension mean?” By late Friday night we were still talking about it. We covered a little bit of relativity and a whole lot about spatial dimensions, projections, extrusion, tesseracts, plus some reading from Flatland and a youtube video based on Flatland. She was totally fascinated, and a little infuriated that she couldn’t visualize a tesseract.
There’s nothing more fun than childhood curiosity.
Read more…
