My Father is David Sedaris' Mother

In Reflections: Letting Go He describes how she reacts when he takes up smoking:

My mother, however, looked at the bright side. “Now I’ll know what to put in your Christmas stocking!” She put them in my Easter basket as well, entire cartons.

My father used to buy me cartons (Benson & Hedges), cut off the UPCs, and then at some later time in the year, give me the gift earned by those UPCs. I got a wine and cheese set, and some lovely/futuristic coffee beakers and a French Press. Of course, when we cleaned out the house after his death, we also found that he was keeping the carton boxes from his own brand (rather than just UPCs) for the possibility of offers to come. He was getting rather hoardy after retirement. There were lots of birdless cages not-yet-cleaned-out, too.

When I'm pining, I'll try and remember Tina's words, from the end of Sedaris' essay.

Via Bitch, Ph.D.

I Think I've Got It

In the week before Mother's Day, the Possum asks what I'd like. "Well," says I, "I'd like The Golden Compass, and I'd like to sit down and watch it, together." And just to be sure, I told the Spouse.

Happily, for Mother's Day, I got The Golden Compass, and movie candy (my favorites: Junior Mints, Circus Peanuts, and Whoppers), and the leisure time to sit and watch a movie I wanted to see with my family on the enormous sofa under the faux-mink throw of decadence. If life gets better than snuggling with the Offspring while watching armored polar bears fight, then I don't think I'm ready for it.

Also, it turned out to be a good choice, because I was too ill over the weekend to do much else anyways.

Solar System Visualizer

Cool and sciency!

Thanks, Live Granades

Signs I'm getting Really Old

The Spouse forwarded this link to me.



Smells Like Teen Spirit

as performed by the Western Branch Freshmen Orchestra.

The WolfOwl Competes

That's her, the one in pink.

In April her tap/ballet class went to competition dancing to Waltz of the Flowers. As the only entry in their age group, they won first place. That's her, in the middle, in a red jacket, with her trophy.



I'm really impressed, because they had a lot of extra rehearsals. They worked hard (students and teachers), and I'm proud of her.

I'm also proud of the Foxcelot, who was patient and generous while her sister literally took center stage.

The recital itself is amazingly long. We stayed until the bitter end on Sunday, all four and a half hours of it. That's probably a bit much for a kindergartener.



She behaved better than I did. The Spouse and I tend to get rather punchy the last half hour or so. Fortunately, the balcony has emptied out by that time so no one was offended, except my beloved MIL.

Next year perhaps I'll remember that there is no where to eat after five. This is only my fourth recital; I can't be blamed. At least I remembered all the costumes, three this year: for ballet, praise dance, and tap.



The Offspring are amazing. Even when they aren't an image by Degas.



Because the recital is held on campus, I got to hear how much the WolfOwl is looking forward to attending college. Mostly for the cool gothic buildings, and the gargoyles. She's really quite thrilled at the idea of being able to take such specific courses as, say Pre-Columbian American History. They better be offering such a thing in twelve years, or there will be trouble.

On Books, and Not Reading Them

Invite me to do a meme, challenge me, and I'll fail to get around to it. But just happen to post a bookish meme (a list!) and I am all over it. Good to see you blogging, Kristjan, I miss your font around the 'Ville.

The books listed below are "the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users." What I’ve read is in italics, what I never finished is struck through:

* Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
* Anna Karenina
* Crime and Punishment
* Catch-22
* One Hundred Years of Solitude
* Wuthering Heights
* The Silmarillion
* Life of Pi : a novel
* The Name of the Rose
* Don Quixote
* Moby Dick
* Ulysses
* Madame Bovary
* The Odyssey
* Pride and Prejudice
* Jane Eyre
* The Tale of Two Cities
* The Brothers Karamazov
* Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
* War and Peace
* Vanity Fair
* The Time Traveler’s Wife
* The Iliad
* Emma
* The Blind Assassin
* The Kite Runner
* Mrs. Dalloway
* Great Expectations
* American Gods
* A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
* Atlas Shrugged
* Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
* Memoirs of a Geisha
* Middlesex
* Quicksilver
* Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
* The Canterbury tales
* The Historian : a novel
* A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
* Love in the Time of Cholera
* Brave New world
* The Fountainhead
* Foucault’s Pendulum
* Middlemarch
* Frankenstein
* The Count of Monte Cristo
* Dracula
* A Clockwork Orange
* Anansi Boys
* The Once and Future King
* The Grapes of Wrath
* The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
* 1984
* Angels & Demons
* The Inferno
* The Satanic Verses
* Sense and Sensibility
* The Picture of Dorian Gray
* Mansfield Park
* One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
* To the Lighthouse
* Tess of the D’Urbervilles
* Oliver Twist
* Gulliver’s Travels
* Les Misérables
* The Corrections
* The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
* The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
* Dune
* The Prince
* The Sound and the Fury
* Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
* The God of Small Things
* A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
* Cryptonomicon
* Neverwhere
* A Confederacy of Dunces
* A Short History o f Nearly Everything
* Dubliners
* The Unbearable Lightness of Being
* Beloved
* Slaughterhouse-five
* The Scarlet Letter
* Eats, Shoots & Leaves
* The Mists of Avalon
* Oryx and Crake : a novel [finished, but I hated it]
* Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
* Cloud Atlas
* The Confusion
* Lolita
* Persuasion
* Northanger Abbey
* The Catcher in the Rye
* On the Road
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame
* Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
* Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
* The Aeneid
* Watership Down
* Gravity’s Rainbow
* The Hobbit
* In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
* White Teeth
* Treasure Island
* David Copperfield
* The Three Musketeers

I don't often finish a book I'm not really enjoying. Every once in a while I'll plow through something I dislike, just to be able to say in excruciating detail why I dislike it. Atwood's a fine writer, but she didn't know what she was talking about it Oryx & Crake, and it showed.

The Russians are clearly not a big hit with me.

By the bye, I'm reading Stumbling on Happiness, which I've been looking forward to forever it seems. It's amazingly good. Gilbert has a polished lecture style (I'm guessing), with jokes and light asides, even as he loads the reader up with all the research. It's not meant to be any sort of self-help book, but it is helpful, I think, to understand why in times of great stress, my daydreams would all be about decorating my dream home (a very human desire for control, particularly when I feel out of control of life events).

More on The Pressure Boys Reunion

Raleigh's News & Observer ran a long article on Sunday.Pressure Men:

"Kick-starting the Pressure Boys back to life has not been simple. Frontman Plymale, guitarist Settle and saxophonist Stafford live in the Triangle, but the other three in the reunion are scattered across the country. Trumpet player Je Widenhouse lives in Asheville, and drummer Rob Ladd and bassist Jack Campbell both reside in California. So they're having to rehearse when they can (including this week)."

Be sure and check out the audio slide show. Kudos to the Spouse, for making it all sound awesome.

More on The Pressure Boys, the fabulous collection Songs for Sixty Five Roses, and the two bands The Pressure Boys and Sneakers

I can hardly wait for Friday night's show. Here's my life: I'm worried about being too tired for the concert, because I'll be at my daughter's dance recital dress rehearsal all evening. The Offspring are too young to attend the show, sadly.

Speaking of Readerville

And aren't I always? Come see my list of recommended steampunk reads.

I don't know if it's acceptable to trackback to one's self, but I'm doing it anyway, as practice.

Update 4/22: So much for that practice. How 'bout this: Steampunk at Readerville