Fall!

Fall is coming!

I was noticing this morning that the light is starting to get a little more amber and the first dry leaves are starting to drift along the streets. It seems awfully soon, but I love Autumn and the days are just packed.

The last day of summer for me is the day we go to the Sheboygan County Fair. I have gone 24 years, probably more if you count pre-natal experience. It used to be combined with my oldest brother’s birthday, but he’s been regrettably far away for the last several years. However, now we’ve gotten to share it with our spouses and one day, our babies. Mom remarks that Rosemary will be big enough for the pony rides next year. I loved the pony rides and one of my biggest regrets in becoming an adult is that I am too big for them.

Anyway, I’ll probably report on that business next week.

Here are definite or possible Fall Events that I’m excited about, roughly in the order they occur:

September

Tom’s birthday

Larson Family Reunion in Minnesota

Apple picking

Raking Leaves and Jumping in Them

Buying mums

Admiring fall store displays

Making Halloween Decorations

Getting out the Fall Jackets

Having Hollywood Beach to Ourselves

Kite Flying

Wearing Gloves

Eating Caramel Apples

October

Visiting every Halloween shop in town

Putting up decorations in my parent’s house

Fixing the widow silouettes if needed

Pumpkin Picking

Corn Maze

Fright Fest at Great America

Trail of Terror at Peterson Park (awesome! Put on by volunteers)

Making a Katy-style scarecrow out of a shock of corn

Wearing my witch’s hat

Deciding on costumes

Halloween performance at the Symphony/ Zoo Trick or Treat

Halloween show at The Music Box Theatre

Watching edited for tv versions of scary movies

Carving Pumpkins

Dressing up Colin as The Amazing Spider-Dog

Halloween Parade

Strolling up and down the neightborhood with Spider-Dog on Halloween

November

Dead of the Dead exhibit at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Pilsen

Eating leftover Halloween candy

Buying flowering kale

Drinking spiced apple cider

Just starting to think about Christmas

Get out winter coats

Celebrate Mom’s birthday

Be thrilled by first snowflake

Bake pies

Help make Thanksgiving dinner (hopefully with two ovens!)

Enjoy Colin’s long fur

Snuggle under blankets

Look at baby sweaters for Rosemary

Put the Christmas Mix on the ipod.

Yay!

Bat Dance

Oh man, is this picture cute! This is a running (or possibly jogging as it’s on a treadmill) vampire bat.

Read the full story here at LiveScience.com

Yoda the Four Eared Cat

Gosh, I love this cat!

He’s soooo cute!

And I’m horribly allergic to cats. I would take shots for this little guy.

He has four ears. Should anything with four ears be so darling?

He must be like cuddling a little space alien or X-Cat.

Full story on Yoda here.

Lego Mania!

Oh my god. I wish I liked to play chess. Witness! The Lego Chess set. Wow. Look at the cute little dwarves, wizards, and skeletons!

I think it’s really interesting what Lego has become. So many of the miniatures are so beautiful and clever now, like the Viking sets or Harry Potter. They look like so much fun. And since I engage in a surprising amount of playing when no one is watching, I can totally appreciate them. I do hope the original building sets are available. We had so much fun with those.

We had the standard pack with 200 or so pieces. All three kids played with it so a considerable amount of pieces were forever lost in the shaggy rya rug in the dining room. Nothing hurts so much as stepping on one of those single peg pieces in your bare feet.

I think there were some illustrations on the box of what you could make, but don’t recall ever following them. I made a lot of houses, gardens, cars, and crates for small plastic animals. I do recall we had only two axles and four wheels of varying sizes, so one’s motorcraft was somewhat unraceable. We had a marvelous time with them.

One sore spot was the lack of female lego figures, however. I am glad they remedied that because I distinctly recall arguing with a boy in kindergarten that because my lego guy was a girl, she needed to have the the little red hard hat to tuck her hair under. Bowed over by this impeccable logic, he gave in and presented me with the helmet.

Legos are made in Denmark, I believe, and one of the big adventures most Scandinavian families have is a trip to Legoland in Jutland. They have various play areas and huge sculptures made entirely of legos. Interestingly, one is about to open in Schaumburg near the Ikea. I keep telling Knut that Scandinavia is coming to him!

We Doo So You Don't Have To!

I wish there were some sort of long distance flaming bag of poo service.

You know, where you’d put a paper bag full of dog doo on neighborhood cranky old man’s porch and then light the top of the bag? Then when he’d stomp it out he’d get poo on his shoes.

I never did that as a child but now that I’m a vindictive adult, I do find myself returning to that idea. Something mostly harmless, but unpleasant. Something that sent a signal saying “we find your oppressive behavior so intolerable we felt we had no choice but to fill a paper bag with dog doo and set a match to it.”

Alas, most of the people I feel have earned such a treatment are out of comfortable driving range, so I’d need some sort of mail order service.

Any takers?

Bigfoot: Dead or Alive!

I’m always delighted when they come up with new Bigfoot or Loch Ness Monsters stories. They’re so charming! I also like reading about the hoaxes perpetrated mostly for kicks, like the famous Surgeon’s photo of Loch Ness or the guy who carved giant wooden feet and tromped around the California forest wearing them. I like those kinds of pranks.

Last week’s big shocker was a supposedly dead bigfoot huddled in a freezer. It does look pretty pathetic and the apparently the DNA analysis revealed nothing but human and opossum DNA. Which is, decidedly, the weirdest combination of DNA around. The article also describes an opossum as a “cat like” creature, which seems a wholly inaccurate description to me. “Giant rat” appearance seems more suitable. Bigfoot can be seen at www.searchingforbigfoot.com

I don’t see a whole lot of point to solving the mysteries, frankly. Suppose they discovered a school of unusually large sturgeons in Loch Ness that were responsible for all the sightings. How disappointing! Once you find an animal, they become simply an animal, like the gorilla or the rhinoceros. These animals were only rumored in Europe for centuries! Now we know they exist and there is definitely less excitement.

One that I find very odd is that of the Kraken. The kraken was a legendary giant squid, like the one in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I keep reading these odd things like could the kraken been inspired by The Giant Squid or the Colossal Squid? Okay, the monster is describes as a giant squid. It doesn’t have magic powers or is covered in fur or sprouts women shaped lures to tempt salty sea dogs. It’s a huge squid. Now it happens that we occasionally find the bodies of gigantic squids. They’re just like little squids, only huge. Can’t we fairly say that we’ve discovered the kraken? Of course, we can’t say that every time a rum soaked sailor spotted a giant tentacle it really was a huge squid, but come on! It’s more than a vague supposition.

Novelties and The Wicker Man

My pal Lauren had a duffle bag full of adult novelties at work today. Alas, my workplace isn’t usually so fun. She was going straight to the airport and then to throw a bachelorette party.

I’ve never seen so much wang shaped stuff and I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Boystown. She had shot glasses, suckers, bracelets, wind up toys, a stuffed monkey, themed plates and napkins, and shaped pasta.

Plans also include a wang shaped cake, which her mother knows how to make free hand.

I started thinking this was sort of odd, because while most straight women enjoy wangs, few prefer them as a decorative motif. This is pretty much the only time in American culture women come together to support the wang, ironically at a women only event.

The more I think about it, the more this resembles a fertility rite. It could be straight out of The Wicker Man. Various babes getting together in preparation to send one of their lot into marriage and surrounding her with phallic imagery.

I’m a big Wicker Man fan, not only because it’s a tense clever film but because a big part of me really feels in tune with paganism. It’s so practical!

If the crops fail, you sacrifice to the gods. If they aren’t right after that, you obviously didn’t pick the right sacrifice and need to try again. There is a direct cause and effect. I also firmly believe that if our hero hadn’t been present, Lord Summerisle would have had to have been sacrificed as was his duty and right and chieftain. It makes sense that such a dreaded duty would fall upon those who sought that power in the community.

Of course, I’m not silly enough to really believe that, but I had a strange shock one afternoon when I asked Knut a question. Do the crops come back the next year? “Of course not,” he said “the ground was wasted. Crops shouldn’t have grown there at all. Nothing would bring them back”

I guess I always assumed that the crops would return. That the perfect sacrifice was made honorably and whatever strange gods they worshipped would be appeased.

It surprises me as much as anyone.

Super Chef, Super Spy!

This news story seriously had me pumping my fist. How cool is it that Julia Child worked for the OSS?

I think most people find this era of spying the most exciting. It seems a bit more gentlemanly that the Cold War and the backdrop is too glamourous.

In any event, I’d always admired Julia Child. Cooking on television is a risky proposition, but her charisma and humor always made her so entertaining. I particularly enjoyed some of her more practical suggestions like that no one knows what happens in the kitchen, so if you drop something just pick it up and wash it off. It’s a nice departure from the slightly paranoid views expressed on Food Network these days. Remember, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger… unless it irreversibly weakens us to the point where something else kills us.

This reminds me too of one of my favorite novels, Shining Through. PLEASE don’t confuse the novel with the film dreck of the same name. The novel is witty, exciting, touching, funny, and very well researched. Linda, our heroine, is a real person and her actions are not always so heroic. Really really great. Compare the climaxes:

The book: Linda (a Queens stenographer turned spy) has been discovered in Berlin. She has found the mole in the operation and made the decision to kill her, only after being wounded herself. She is saved by Edward, her former boss, a New York laywer and WWI hero, who speaks no German. He is posed as a Nazi General (in the hopes that such an important rank will not cause people to question him) whose war wounds prevent him from speaking. Linda poses as his mistress going to Switzerland to get an abortion. The final border guard recognizes something is wrong with the papers, but is muffled by the sight of Edward’s scars, manner, and a huge wad of Swiss francs. The guard smilingly ushers them to freedom. It’s tense and funny and real feeling.

The movie: Linda (Melanie Griffith who was only good in Body Double (although I think that was more about casting than acting) and has gross wormy glossy red lips) and Edward (Michael Douglas… eh.) stagger across the border to Switzerland with Nazis shooting at them. When they cross the invisible line (which isn’t invisible) the Germans magically stop shooting them. Because the Nazis were all about respecting boundery lines. Linda then reveals that the microfilm (yes, microfilm. This is not in the novel) was hidden in her glove because she “knew that it would be discovered if I was examined by a doctor, but not by the SS.” Indeed. If I were looking for microfilm on a dead body, I expect that not only would I remove all clothing, I would probably search all body cavities. Perhaps this is my German efficiency speaking?

Ugh. It’s so awful when they destroy a novel you love in a lame film version. Anyway, I heartily recommend the book.

Casting Couch

I just did my first casting in class! It’s pretty exciting. First you heat a crucible with a blow torch, then you load your mold, then you pour in the metal bits, melt them with the blow torch, and then spin the arm around forcing the liquid metal into the mold.

I made a small silver ring (which I may melt down after I finish it, not being much of a ringer wearer); a pair of (hopefully) good-looking diamond shaped heavily textured diamond-shaped silver earrings, and a bronze medallion with an antelope or goat’s head in the center.

Here’s the goat!

Both the instructor and a colleague of hers were pretty impressed with the goat. I was surprised myself. I made it from sheet wax never thinking I’d cast it; cast it never thinking it would cast correctly, and now I just need to cut it off the sprews (?) and clean it up.

My instructor’s colleague cracks me up. He’s a large flamboyant man whose art features of bronze statues of heavily muscled male torsos.

Art we all can appreciate!

Lightnin' Cubs!

Last night we went with our Norwegian pals Simen and Sturle to the Cubs game. The game started out beautifully. It was sunny and warm. The lads enjoyed hot dogs and tried nachos for the first time. Note to Europeans: the beer vendors won’t accept EU driver’s licenses.

The Cubs weren’t playing well, but we were enjoying it. Witness Sturle!

They called a rain delay at 7:40 pm. There was TONS of lightning. I can’t believe they didn’t call it before then, because it looked really dangerous. We were all looking at the lightning behind the scoreboard but we eventually realized it was much worse behind the press box. It didn’t look like it was going to stop so we decided to leave at 8pm. After walking past two Elvises high fiving each other (one of whom apparently then ran onto the field and skidded across the huge tarp laid over the infield), we heard this garbled announcement. Turns out they were telling everyone to leave the stands and get into the concourse.

A couple of workers tried half heartedly to stop us leaving the stadium, but we walked out and I realized they were blowing the tornado sirens. I have never heard those in Wrigleyville before. We jumped onto the Red Line and it was raining so hard and blowing so badly that water was spurting out through the crack between the doors and pooling in the floor of the car. There was lightning everywhere and the conductor must have been driving at top speed.

When we got off at Bryn Mawr, we stuck under the awnings for the first block, but the little half block to our apartment had us soaked to the skin and cringing from the thunder. About 15 minutes after we got inside, there was this gigantic fork pronged lightning bolt that looked like it hit near the Bryn Mawr station. All the car alarms in the neighborhood went off.

I’m glad we didn’t stay for those last couple of innings! They were insane to start playing again

Who Ya Gonna Call?

I love the movie Ghostbusters. I was only 4 when it came out and hadn’t seen many movies in theaters at all. In fact, this is the first film I remember going to.

Yes, children, believe it or not there was a time not too long ago before VCRs, DVDs, and on demand TV. If you missed the last few minutes of a film on tv, you might never find out how it ended. Scary, huh?

Ghostbusters does sound a little intense for a child so young, but I was insistent! I remember sitting on the swing outside of my uncle’s house while my father explained the premise (he and my brothers had gone to see it). He said that these ghostbusters captured ghosts in a tiny capsule. I was hooked.

So eventually, when it came to the Pickwick (which was a 3rd run theater at the time. I think a ticket was $1.50) I was taken to see it!

The bliss!

Except for one part. Right at the beginning, our heroes are called to investigate a ghost sighting at the Public Library. She is a transparent torso of an elderly lady. When Venkman tries to speak to her, she looks up from her book, raises a finger to her lips, and shushes him.

Venkmen backs away and confers with the Spengler and Stantz. Stantz says “Leave it me” and then shouts “Get her!” while the trio rushed forwards. The lady ghost turns towards them.

And then!

Mom claps her hand over my eyes.

I have a vision of a white flash, but don’t see what happened.

This haunted me. My imagination created a grotesque twisted skeletal creature with a skull like an elongated bowling pin. And then my imagination gave me nightmares.

It wasn’t until several years later that I saw the film again and saw that the library ghost turns into this rather charming ghoul. She’s actually sort of cute. I actually tense up a little bit at that part, remembering the twisted being of my imagination and am always relieved it’s not there.

As Fine as a Troll's Hoard

I have my jewelry class tonight and I’m thinking of bringing some of my most favorite jewelry to ask the instructor how it was made.

My favorite jewelry store in THE WORLD is in Valle, Norway. It is the home of Hasla.

We found it totally by chance. We had decided to drive through Norway from our home in the West to Oslo. In the wintertime, you have to take the highway that runs around the southern coast, but in summer, you can go through the mountains right across the center.

This is always charming because a good portion is through isolated country without human inhabitants, but lots of sheep. Farmers let the sheep up in the mountain to graze all summer long and then bring sheepdogs to round them up in early Fall to bring them back in for the winter. There are no fences and the sheep roam at will and nap in the road. They know no fear and you frequently have to stop the car and honk the horn until they get out of the way.

Anyway, after a tough morning of sheep-honking, we decided to stop for lunch just on the other side of the pass. This happened to be a tiny village called Valle.

It has a gas station, a city hall, a restaurant, a church, and a church community center. But towering about them is a silversmith in an enormous building built rather like a stabur.

Walk inside and it’s immediately clear there are masters at work. The workshop is visible through glass and the wall lined with sale cases. Hasla makes extraordinary bunad jewelry. Delicate filigree silver work is a trademark. It is beautiful, but I most love their modern pieces.

I have in particular two modern pars of earrings made in bronze. One is an elongated stem ending in four curved petals, known as their tulip design. The other is a bold twist of wires in a design the elves of Middle Earth might have admired.

They also use their bunad skills to other effects creating marvelous confections shaped like butterflies or daisies. Really spectacular.

It’s a shame, in a way. Their traditional pieces are fairly widely available, but the pieces I’ve really fallen in love with only seem available in that funny little valley.

www.hasla.no

Dogs, Monkeys, Groundhogs

This weekend’s plans:
1. Dog Beach (Knut went yesterday, met three baby Cavaliers. I stayed home because he was a little bit grumpy. Darn it!). Will attempt to wade with Colin. Colin has previously shown no interest in swimming. I’m hoping peer pressure is the answer.

2. Awesome party at Cynthia and Steffi’s. Here’s the text from the invitation:

"God vs. the Monkeys -
We're having a party! For no particular reason, although it happens to fall on the same date that the Scopes "Monkey" Trial came to a close in 1925. To honor this this original showdown between the Creationists and the Evolutionists, we'll be serving up some brass monkeys and -- for those who remain faithful to Genesis -- some sour apple cocktails. Also feel free to BYOB (the B standing, of course, for Bonobos and Bibles, though Beer is okay too).

So come over next Friday to reconnect with your inner primate and nourish your jungle roots. We don't know exactly how the night will turn out, but we imagine it will look something like this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKXqqjhnOhM"

Looking forward to that! My favorite part of their parties is Knut sitting and being admired by super cute lesbians because he’s strong enough to open the hatch to the roof. It’s far too adorable.

3. Road trip to Woodstock. To Woodstock, IL not the 1969 Music Festival. I do not expect The Who to be there. Although that would be awesome! Woodstock is where they filmed Groundhog Day. It’s also the hometown of the creator of Dick Tracey. I’ve heard there’s a little Dick Tracey museum. We basically just feel like getting out of the city.

I don’t know what we’ll do on Sunday yet. Probably early preparations for the Norwegians who will be coming on Thursday. Right! I almost forgot to ask to borrow sheets and pillows from my folks!

A Rose For Emily

Do you like Faulkner? He’s got sort of grim creepy quality to his writing that appeals to me. I love dusty ghost stories and chaste murders. So I was reading a full text of his short story “A Rose for Emily” (I have no idea if there’s any reference meant in the Emily Rose film) and was struck by two paragraphs:

It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores. And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson.

Naturally, I being a modern babe, associate “the seventies” as the 1970s. After all, they could be described and “heavily lightsome” with all the weird browns and bizarre starburst shapes. However, he means the 1870s and it’s also funny to think of people objecting to garages and cotton gins which to us would be as quaint and darling as a period blacksmith shop. I wonder if people 100 years from now will think Wal-Mart and billboards are charming?

Then this one:

So THE NEXT day we all said, "She will kill herself"; and we said it would be the best thing. When she had first begun to be seen with Homer Barron, we had said, "She will marry him." Then we said, "She will persuade him yet," because Homer himself had remarked--he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elks' Club--that he was not a marrying man. Later we said, "Poor Emily" behind the jalousies as they passed on Sunday afternoon in the glittering buggy, Miss Emily with her head high and Homer Barron with his hat cocked and a cigar in his teeth, reins and whip in a yellow glove.

I swear I read that five times before I figured out that Faulkner probably wasn’t explicitly saying he was gay. I mean, frankly, it fits the story well enough but it’s not very subtle. I gather “he liked men” mostly meant he enjoyed hanging out with other guys, drinking and gossiping. Still it is a question, isn’t it? I mean, people have always gossiped about that sort of thing, right? Ugh, I’m torn.

Anyhow, it’s a pretty creepy story of a woman who just sort of fades away through pride and madness. Another chilling story for a hot day. Full text here: http://www.ariyam.com/docs/lit/wf_rose.html

Thank You For Being a Friend

Estelle Getty died today.

If you weren’t a fan, she played “Sophia” on The Golden Girls. The Golden Girls featured the antics of Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, and Sophia as they zipped around Miami and dated an endless parade of trim balding men.

The point was that it was a sit com about women who were over 50! And people loved it!

In our household, Mom and I would air pop popcorn in the microwave, cover it in melted butter and settle down in the kitchen to watch on the tiny nine inch screen. I always imagined them to be old, but when I became an adult, I was shocked to realize that they actually weren’t that old. Not old enough for Social Security or Medicare, but old enough to have adult children and dead husbands. An interesting and frequently forgotten segment of the population.

Mom really admired Bea Arthur. T think the idea of a tall handsome woman with dark eyebrows and graying hair appealed to her—since she fits that description as well. She also really liked the clothes but when I’ve watched it recently the amount of caftans, scrunch boots, and endless layers is a little overwhelming.

Let’s see which plots I remember… Dorothy gets Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (is that still around? It was the hot disease then), Rose experiences ageism, they buy condoms, they all pose nude for a sculpture, one of them has a pregnant unmarried daughter, Stan comes to recover from an illness, the piano playing chicken. Oh! I bet I know all the words to the song they wrote for the Miami Song Contest!

I have to say what I feel…
Miami has great appeal…
A good place for a seafood meal…

Miami, Miami
You’ve Got Style!
Blue skies, sunshine, white sands by the mile

If you live in this town, you’ll have a great time
The coldest of winters is warm and divine!

Awww.. that’s all I remember! I did find a link though!

A Work Day Fantasy

I’m not having a particularly nice day at work today, so I think I’ll lapse into a Walter Mitty style fantasy for a moment. Where would I like to be…

There is a beach in Hong Kong, not far from the worlds largest seated Buddha (not to be confused with the world’s largest reclining Buddha which is in Bangkok).

And on this beach, there is a pretty outdoor restaurant where the tables are set in the sand under a canopy. The sand is a little gritty and gray white.

The restaurant is owned by Ex Pats, so they serve bread to start with. We order seed bread packed with poppy and sesame seeds. We order Sangria. It’s clear red wine served in a small round wine glass, garnished with a stick of cinnamon and a slice of green apple.

We kick our shoes off and our toes dig like hermit crabs into the sand. We sip the sangria and nibble seed bread while the sun floats just above the horizon.

We spot another table beneath the red striped canopy. They are Englishmen dressed in traditional Indian white cotton outfits. We sneer a bit as we admire our seersucker and sundresses. The Englishmen have ordered many bottles of wine, but their inebriation is wholly cheerful.

We order grilled shrimp and crabs steamed with garlic. This is some of the freshest sea food in the world. We lick our buttered fingers and smile as the sun fades and pretty strings of miniature lanterns glow above our heads.

There’s still a bit of light so we leave our shoes under the table and take a a stroll along the tiny beach. A few children make grainy sandcastles but our attention is caught by something else. A feral cow stands on the shore, briny water lapping at its hooves. It’s furry and rather small. It wears no brand or ear tag. It will not let us touch it but is not bothered by our presence. The children jump up and we join them in chasing the cow down the beach. The cow jogs lazily along, clearly not too bothered by the game.

The sun goes on to warm the other side of the world and leaves us, the cow, and the children with only the glow of the party lights and the stars.

The Puppet Bike!

Knut and I were going to the Kriskintel Market in Daley plaza Christmas of 2006 and we were instantly smitten.

We met the Puppet Bike.

I am a huge Puppet Bike Fan.

The Puppet Bike is a tiny puppet theater mounted to the back of a bicycle that weeds its way around Chicago delighting many and mystifying a few. It’s a brightly painted box just large enough for one person to stand inside with a tiny stage at eye level. There two frolicking hand puppets dance their way through blue grass, swing, or old favorites. They don’t speak, just dance. Their trademark is when the two puppets join paws and twirl forwards and then backwards.

So far I have seen a sweet little bunny, two tigers, a cat, a bear, and a monkey. If you show your appreciation for the dancing animals by putting a dollar in the little tip box on the front, a puppet will pop out of a side slit and wave enthusiastically. I highly recommend tipping such a great (but tiny) institution.

The Puppet Bike usually hangs around the Loop in all kinds of weather. I’ve mostly seen it on Lake or Michigan Avenue and if you want to take a photo with the bike, the puppets will gladly pose with you.

See The Puppet Bike Perform!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcPgTxbPdGQ

A Taste of…?

My hometown celebrated a special event last weekend called “Taste of Park Ridge.” “Taste ofs” usually offer small portions of food in an outdoor fair-like atmosphere.

The best is Stavanger’s “Glad Mat” (literally means “Happy Food”) which is situated on Stavanger’s gorgeous harbor and offers lots of very adult fare like raw oysters, grilled half lobster, beautifully presented French desserts, champagne, mussels, wild boar sandwiches, and fresh fruits. Mind you, Knut and I spent a fortune there. Eating out is a huge gamble in Norway because it’s so expensive that it’s a giant disappointment if the food isn’t good. It’s heartbreaking to blow a month’s free money on a curry containing chewy mutton instead of tender lamb, so we’d just go to the same few places we knew were delicious. Glad Mat was just a few dollars for a small piece so if it was awful (I recall having the world’s worst nan bread there. How did they manage that?) you just tossed it in a bin.

Taste of Chicago is huge and used to be a wonderful event. When it began really nice restaurants like Bob Chinn’s offered small portions of garlic shrimp and you could stroll around munching shark or alligator. It was a tidy crowd who enjoyed sampling many things. Now it’s largely ghetto teenagers and the stalls are almost entirely pizza sellers. The one stand out in the last two years I went was a tiny crayfish boil in a Dixie cup. That was fantastic. It was three crayfish, a bit of potato, and a piece of corn cob all simmered in delicious spicy seasonings.

Taste of Park Ridge is definitely smaller scale and it’s almost totally locals. Many of the local restaurants had booths up selling Italian Ice, funnel cakes, pad thai,, tacos, etc. The stand out was a booth called Applause Catering. They had pulled pork and brisket sandwiches that were meltingly good, roasted corn on the cob, and homemade potato chips. I asked my mother who they were and she told me it was the man who provided the food for the local retirement hotel! Who would have guessed?!

They also had live music which in this case was an ABBA tribute band. As you can see from the photo, there wasn’t too much resemblance to ABBA. The blonde was very short and I couldn’t figure out where the second guy was. The women’s voices were also a bit on the heavy side, without that oh so Scandinavian brittleness. Mind you, the crowd had a great time. I just feel Knut and I can do “Tiger” just as well.

Household Engineering Challenge

We have the greatest kitchen table. It’s actually a vintage drafting table in excellent condition. It’s got a heavy wood top and a metal base enameled in John Deere green. And it still works.

Possibly a little too well.

In fact, one side of the table wobbles when you lean on it. The left side, which is the that’s meant to tip down to the floor, falls about an inch and a half when pressure is applied. The right side remains stable when pressure is applied. This is a problem given that Knut and my father are huge elbow leaners. The only way to get around it was to have both men sitting opposite of each other, which works fine until one gets up. This was especially noticeable during Easter Egg dying.

So I’ve been thinking of a mechanical means to brace it, but I would definitely like to preserve the drafting function. So far, I’ve thought of mounting an extra leg that could swing out (like an old fashioned gaming table) or having a wholly separate pedestal that we could just slide under when we’re using the whole table (right now the wobbly side is pressed against a wall to hold it steady, which works very well.)

However, any engineering expertise would be appreciated!

Daily Coyote

It's been a very busy week so I haven't had much of a chance to do a lot of posting, but I got the chance this morning to catch up on my favorite blog (besides this one):  The Daily Coyote

This blog is the work of Shreve Stockton, who is a most interesting woman.   She began by moving from San Francisco to New York, not with a U-Haul like the majority of us, but alone on a Vespa.  On her way, she fell in love with Wyoming and returned there, instead of continuing to live in New York.

In Wyoming, she encountered a motherless baby coyote and felt compelled to save him from certain death.  This blog is the story of Shreve, Charlie the Coyote, and Eli the Cat as they go through their daily lives.   It's recorded mostly through beautiful photographs.  

I'm always a little envious of people who have the ability to cast practical thoughts aside and roam at will.  Most of us are stuck in a groove that forces us to do quite reasonable things like stay in jobs we hate because we're accustomed to the money, live in areas purely because they're what we're familiar with, or stick to experiences that hold no threats for us.  The truth is that freedom is a very scary thing and too many people will trade liberation for security.

In any event, Charlie's life is one I fear stands a good chance of ending in sadness, but it is so exhilarating to watch it even from afar.

http://dailycoyote.blogspot.com

FOGHORN Returns!

The Foghorn Magazine has returned!

And it comes bearing a new article by.... wait for it...

ME!!

If you want to read the sort of bloody curdling tales my darling mother reveals, read CHEERFULLY MORBID at the Foghorn Magazine. 

I guarantee you'll be shocked and amazed at what people in Crookston, MN in the 1950s got up to!

A.I.

Have you seen A.I.? I myself am not a fan. Frankly, I find the idea of a child sized robot who is programmed to love pretty freaky (who would order that? Deviants and Cat Ladies? I mean, it doesn’t grow up! It just hangs around… loving… Weird.) and the whole Pinocchio idea is pretty strained. There are some very pretty shots and some gigantic plot holes in there too which are fun to pick apart, much like the robot demolition derby. Speaking of which, was that scene supposed to bother us? Are they suggesting that all robots have emotions and would thus hate to be destroyed? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure this computer isn’t much interested in its own ambitions. But I digress, here are the two things that really are great:

1. Teddy the Super Toy! Man, I would love a super toy. They’re so cool! Imagine having a little bear who could follow you around and have little chats with you and possibly watch your bags when you’re on vacation. I’d bring mine to work and teach him to staple things. Then I’d sit him on my lap and snuggle him as my day goes south. Maybe he could stroke my hair and say “only two days until the weekend…” Actually, the big plus would that he’d be like a dog you could take anywhere. I imagine having Teddy break would be very traumatic, though. When my beloved non robotic teddy bear, Sarah, finally had to be retired (her neck seam was so weak from hugging it couldn’t be properly resewn) I was sad for weeks. Fortunately, I have a lovely little spaniel who is probably even better than a supertoy. He’s definitely lasted more than a summer.

2. Sex Robots! Think of it: prostitution without the risk of disease, drug abuse, mean pimps, emotional trauma, etc. It could be clean and discreet. It would probably lose at least some of it’s taboo nature. I wonder what Charlie Sheen thinks? Plus, I think pretty much every woman and probably lots of men like the idea of a Jude Law sexbot. It boggles the mind. This furthers my suspicion that Futurama is the clearest vision of the future. We get computer technology and what do we do with it? Make humping USB dogs. I wonder if that’s a flaw in archaeology too. We tend to assume everything has a purpose when many things don’t beyond our own amusement.

Thumb, Can, Ahhh... Memories...

Today is my first wax casting class. I’m a little nervous because I’ve never done any metalwork or jewelry making. I am generally pretty good with tools and small objects (ie, Fimo stuff) but it’s a whole new medium.

The class is actually a birthday present from my lovely sister-in-law and brother. Mina thought the wax casting class would be ideal for me, and is charmingly hoping to recap her investment in my talents :)

I did take wood shop and plastics in junior high, along with a bevy of art classes. I loathed wood shop because we had to do a lot of hand filing and sanding. My kingdom for a power sander! I was the only kid willing to use the grinder because I just hated the boring repetitive sanding.

Our woods teacher came directly from the shop teacher mold. He was a tall sturdy guy who somewhat resembled Pete Postlethwaite. He used the word “can” a lot. As in “You stand on that and you’re gonna slip and fall on your can.” On the first day, he would lift one giant scarred paw and say “You see this? This is where I cut my thumb off the first time. It was on that very saw” and fifteen sets of eyes drifted towards the gleaming blade. “The second time,” he continued “was on a circular saw. YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO BE CAREFUL!!”

Even as a fourteen year old I wondered about that. Anyone who works with power cutting tools could have an accident. You just need to be distracted for a second. However, after you’ve completely cut your thumb off once, don’t you think you would be really really careful? He cut off the same thumb on two separate occasions! I mean, “fool me once…”

This speech then had less of the effect of warning us to be careful of the machine and more of the concern about what we would do if he cut his thumb off again in class. I mean, I presume we’d grab the drafting teacher, but should we look for the thumb? What do we do with it after we find it? Put it in that weird sawdust janitors use to clean up vomit? The only ice would be two flights down the stairs, would that take too long?

Fortunately, it stayed firmly on throughout the trimester, but it was a niggling worry.

Wish me luck on my class! Hopefully it’ll be lots of fun!