gardening success

Which of these gardening successes am I most proud of?Is it the tomato bursting with promise (oh please oh please get red and juicy!),

or the rose blooming a few months behind schedule because the rosebush finally came back to life? Let's ask my assistant what he thinks."Mud doesn't always taste as good as you think it will." Wise words, little one.

I love Southwest

and hate everyone else. US Airways has a $150.00 exchange fee to change tickets. Of course, I'm the excellent reader that thought it said $15, but come on. That basically means my ticket (which cost less than that) has to be used on the day I intended or never again. It doesn't matter why or what change I need, it will be $150. I could buy a brand new ticket on Southwest for that. I knew it was a mistake to split my trip between airlines to save money.

Other reasons Southwest wins:

1. No baggage fee (not even for the 2nd bag)
2. Extra free baggage allowed when traveling with kids
3. No drink fee
4. Cheap tickets from Phoenix (usually--sorry, Scott and Jen, not always to Ohio!)
5. Funny staff (see Anna-Lisa's post on the subject)

Cry.

So what do you do when you want to lay down and cry but have a baby under foot who needs lunch? Call mom. I did, and I feel better, but I'm still more loyal to SWA than ever.

joining the good eats fan club

I love Good Eats. I used to get annoyed with Alton Brown (he is a little cooky), but then I started trying his recipes. Not only are they delicious, but after watching the show, I know why certain techniques lead to certain results, which equals better cooking with all my recipes. He is to thank for my all-time favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, which I personally modified with confidence because of his program. Well, tonight I bring you another reason to love AB. He (or his staff) checks the comments on his recipes.

I am trying his pizza dough recipe tonight and found this comment at the bottom of the recipe: *This recipe's been on the web for some time now and although most of the reactions have been darned positive, some of you have commented that the dough was way too salty. At first we chalked this up to personal preference; some folks are just not as sensitive as others to this basic flavor. And of course salty toppings would definitely change the dynamic. Still, we didn't want to leave it at that. We went back to the lab and found that the flake size of kosher salt differs quite a bit from brand to brand. This could easily result in a too salty crust. So unless you've had success with the recipe in the past, we suggest you cut the salt by one teaspoon, from a tablespoon to two teaspoons. So that the yeast doesn't go crazy, you should also cut back on the sugar by half a teaspoon. Thanks, AB.

Cool.

busy busy busy

We had a busy day yesterday soaking in the good March weather before it heats up. Jonah and I went to the park and accomplished lots of important tasks, like:

crawling,playing with sticks,
sliding,
and trying out the swing. I tried to get him to hold on to the swing and he got mad. This boy does not like his hands touched!
The afternoon was ended perfectly by the discovery of one baby tomato. Oh I hope it gets big and delicious before the birds eat it!

P.S. The new header is a picture of my two surviving poppies. Sad day.

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

Title: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks*
Author: E. Lockhart
Rating: 5 stars

I've erased and rewritten the summary 4 times because I can't do it justice. Read Janssen's here or make do with this short one: smart girl gets cute boyfriend who is part of a secret society that she can't join. Mix in clever word games, smart societal commentary, and believable (but not boring) mental dialogue and I was hooked right away. While Frankie's experience was nothing like my high school life, it did remind me of my first semester away at school. There's something about a bunch of teenagers who think they're really smart living away from home that develops into a bit of witty (but often no more sophisticated than high school) society. I liked how the book played on it without getting too heavy. I laughed the whole time but still had something to chew on at the end.

This was the only book in the tournament that I couldn't put down and I recommend it 100% percent. I also learned what Panopticon means and think about it often. No one else seems to think it stands a chance against the heavy hitters in the tournament, but I argue that they discount it based on genre. Many of the reasons it didn't win are part of the genre instead of weaknesses. The dialouge and Frankie's thoughts especially are so spot on without being boring that it's believable and funny at the same time. Trust me, that is very hard to do. I just tried to come up with an example and all my ideas were terrible. I was so frustrated when Shadow Country won just because it is heavier. Who wants to read a 700 page YA book anyway?

*I don't usually like books with mouth-full titles, but this one works and totally makes sense when you read it. So go read it right now.

Shadow Country

Title: Shadow Country
Author: Peter Matthiessen
Rating: 3 stars

Aside from my displeasure that Shadow Country beat out The Disreputable History in the first round of the Tournament of Books, it was a cool book. It is a three-part chronology of "the legend of Watson", or in other words, every detail about the history and circumstances of a murderer. From the tournament site: "Shadow Country is a slowly evolving book: rarely do you turn the pages to find out what’s going to happen. Instead you feel the legend of Watson grow and evolve. You hear the voices of the people who knew him. And you watch the sultry Eden of south Florida with its shell mounds and plume birds slowly get fouled by America’s original sinners, its pioneers."

I found the book eerie and compelling. It was good, but very long and slow. Not slow in a bad way, though. It was more of a meandering book than a page-turner, but it kept my interest well enough. I loved the descriptions of the people and setting because I haven't read much that can pull it off so well. I felt like I was in the early South without getting sick of the slang. If only I didn't feel like everything good I say takes away from Frankie...

uh-oh

Bad news, kids. Those carrots that never got big so I pulled them all out to make room for tomatoes? They were actually poppies.

Imagine my surprise when a stray carrot started blooming. Trust me, the plants look very similar. Oh, and when I pulled them out the roots were thick and orange. Am I going crazy here? Maybe we had both poppies and carrots?

good-bye, spring break

Spring break is over in the morning, but what a great time we've had. Some highlights:

• Stopping in Page to spend the night with the Burton's. Lake Powell is beautiful both night and day.
• A comfortable bed to sleep in with a crib for Jonah. Thanks, Rob & Shante! He got spoiled, though, with us in his room for so long. The last few nights have been...interesting.
• Jonah meets snow.
• Magelby's for breakfast.
• Catching up on this season of Lost.

This next week should be good, too. My mom and Quintin are in Paris (me = jealous), my dad and sisters and I are going to Thatcher to see my great aunt, and my sister-in-law turns 30 this week so we're having a party! In unfortunate news, The Disreputable History is out of the tournament of books already. There's a chance it can come back in the zombie round, and I think it should. First, it's a great book. Second, the judge totally dismissed it as frivolous (which although it is lighthearted, it is not frivolous), and third, it was up against a book that was actually just a reworking of a trilogy published ten years ago. Does that even count as a new book? I have doubts.

A Partisan's Daughter

Title: A Partisan's Daughter
Author: Louis de Bernieres
Rating: 1 star

It wasn't worth finishing.

The first part of the book was compelling but very scandalous. I wouldn't recommend it to many people because it was certainly an R-rated book. I skimmed the parts that made me uncomfortable and found there was not much else to the book. The critics raved that the author is the best story teller of our time. While he certainly could spin a yarn, there wasn't much story to tell.

The one thing I liked in the book was the obvious ties to 1,001 Arabian Nights which were subtle but thorough. Since I didn't finish the book (I actually skipped about 75 pages and read the end, but that's just how I do things...) I am appalled that it won it's bracket. I hope it bombs in round 2.

Netherland

Title: Netherland
Author: Joseph O'Neill
Rating: 2 Stars

I'm sad that Netherland is out already, and not just because it lost to the worst book ever written. Netherland is about New York after 9/11 without being about the attacks. It follows a British man who was living in NY and after everything settles down his life falls apart. I preferred it over many of the books in the tournament because it wasn't sad for the sake of being sad. That, and it has a reasonably happy ending, which is always good news. There is some mystery and quite a bit of long memory sequences, but not in a way that ruined the book for me.

This book was great for travel but I had one main complaint. In fact, it is the reason I am changing this from 3 stars to 2 almost a week after the original post. All in all, the book was very disjointed. Although the narration moved seamlessly from topic to topic, at the end, I wasn't really sure what the book was about. It made for a great read once but I would never bother a second time. Like I said, great travel book but hard to recommend (since I don't really know what I would be recommending).

tournament picks

The tournament has begun! As I have read most (but not all) the books, this will be an unusual commentary, but you can check out the real thing here. Round 1 is up. My picks are in blue:

2666 v. Steer Toward Rock
Netherland v. A Partisan's Daughter
The White Tiger v. Harry, Revised
Unaccustomed Earth v. City of Refuge
Shadow Country v. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
The Northern Clemency v. The Lazarus Project
A Mercy v. The Dart League King
Home v. My Revolutions

This was tricky for me because Shadow Country and The Disreputable history were two of my favorites. Hopefully Shadow Country comes back in the zombie round (that's where the two highest rated books by the public--determined prior to the tournament began--come back for a second chance) because it was neat.

I thought I was going to write about each of the books as they came up, but that'd be like 6 books a week at first! I guess I'll just write about what I want and when.

spring

"You know what the worst part is about making friends in college?" Josh asked me one morning a few weeks ago. "Everyone moving away and never seeing each other again."

"No, no," I countered. "That's the best part, because you have friends all over the world who you know if you ever see will drop everything and have lunch with you but they understand that you have a busy life and so do they." After I argued my point, though, I started to miss some good friends.

I miss Anna-Lisa and Juan Carlos coming over to watch Conference (or Lost) and JC and Josh falling asleep on the couch while we talked for hours. I miss Becca taking me in, like the time she took me to buy my first winter coat. So even though Josh was more right than I give him credit for, so was I. On a whim, we're going to visit some friends from college who have opened their home to us and we can't wait. On the way there, we're stopping in Page to spend some time with some new college friends. Friends that we may never see after Josh graduates in December. Or maybe we will. Either way, it's far too lonely when I try not to care because they (or we) might move away.

So posting will be light most of this week, but when we get back, the Tournament of Books begins (woohoo!). I promise to post a few pictures of the baby along with all the book talk for all you Jonah stalkers out there.

So what's the deal with the flowers? I took that picture at Rob and Shante's wedding three years ago. Doesn't that look like spring?

It was summer.

THIS picture I took in spring three years ago and this is the weather we're heading into:
Wish us luck and happy Spring Break!

homegrown stimulus package

I read this article and felt happy. It's about a pharmacist who recently gave his employees $700 a piece in $2 bills. He asked that they give 15% to charity and spend the rest at local shops. He chose $2 so they can see where the money circulates. He says he did it to give his employees and town a feeling of confidence in their job security and in each other. Pretty neat, I thought.

Unfortunately, most of the comments on the article said "Pay it Forward" which reminds me of the terrible movie where the kid dies at the end. You know, it would have been a good and powerful movie without the sad ending. Ugh.

pictures (and a few words)

Josh says a good post is lots of pictures and a few words. While sometimes I have too many words for that, I can talk about Jonah with pictures since he's my favorite model. Here we go:

He babbles a lot these days. We think he might be saying "mama" since it usually is linked to me in some way. Either that, or he thinks it means food. He also says what sounds like "woah!" but we're not ready to call that a word yet (although it is pretty funny).

He's mobile. He scoots, rolls, and twists his way around the house. In fact, this morning I went to get him from his nap and found him sitting up in his crib. That's talent!He feeds himself. Most of his favorite things to eat are small chunks of real food.He claps, laughs, and wiggles whenever Josh is around. This boy loves his daddy. Hope that helps, Mom! (She's been missing her boy)

dance!

From an early age, we knew Jonah liked music. Once, when he was really sick and kept waking up at night, the only thing that would calm him down was his glow worm. It was news to us, however, that he also liked to dance.

It took us a while to realize that the little bob was dancing. We started to notice that he did it whenever there was music and stopped when the song did (except when he keeps "singing" to himself). Sacrament hymns? Bob. Lullabies? Bob. The ABC's? Bob. It makes me wonder if he does it in the car, too. I guess we'd better get this kid some music. I was hoping he'd be a drummer, but I would take dance instead. In fact, if he could turn out something like Twitch (from So You Think You Can Dance), I could handle that too.

Oh, and I think he looks slightly crazy, so you won't hurt my feelings if you do too.