the owls are not what they seem

I think this owl is trying to mind-control me from his perch on an eye-level bookshelf. On the one hand, he's a humble thrift store Avon owl that used to hold Snow Owl Moonwind powder sachet, at least according to the sticker on the bottom. (Maybe that's just a cover. Maybe he's in Avon witness protection or something.) I bought him as an owl-joke for my cousin, but then grew attached and kept him myself. But how many horror stories start with some innocent tchotchke? SO MANY. These b/w "film grain" photos make him look scarier than he really is. (Or maybe they reveal exact levels of scariness. I may have to turn him around before I go to sleep.)

I digress. I came here to talk about books.




This is the bookshelf at the top of the stairs. (Yes, that's a giant pile of shoes in the lower-right corner. They aren't ones I really wear anymore and this started as a temporary spot until I sorted out the ones going away for now and the ones going away for good - but the kitten hides his choicest toys in there, so I've leapt on that as an excuse to continue doing nothing.)  ANYWAY - I had this idea for a fun blog project: a photo for each cube, and I'll write a little about what might be in there. The shelves are more or less tidy since I just had to take everything out and put it back in (to paint the floor), but they're only in vague order. I always like to see people's bookshelves, so I thought WHY NOT? I will show some of mine. It'll be fun! Maybe I'll figure out the perfect way to arrange them.  This isn't meant to be some kind of complete inventory or 500 book reviews, it's just one set of shelves and some book chat. I would love it if you did it too! (no pressure - just think about it.)



The owl made me do it.

First shelf post will come Friday afternoon, unless I go to the movies in which case it will be Sunday evening.

crocus

It is raining today, but here are some sunny day photos of CROCUS. I love the name crocus! it sounds like it was coined by a botanist who happened to be a frog or a toad.


Crocus (a different variety than this) is where saffron comes from.
...maybe crocus was named by a crocodile botanist.

[side note from my window: it is raining, but there are 3 robins hopping from branch to flowered branch in the cherry tree -  a very charming scene that thankfully distracted me from the machinations of crocodile botany.]


With stripes! It looks like silk.

sun: shining

• the light was so nice this morning - it's sunny today, so all spring things are hastening along. There will be daffodils soon. 
• I worked on the story I've been working on forever. It keeps turning in these directions I didn't expect when I started, but so far that's been a good thing. I need to finish it. I'm in a finishing mood. (I'm nowhere near finishing.) 
• I watered houseplants and vow to take better care of them. Otis the kitten thinks they're his personal jungle and they deserve some extra love for not throwing him over the balcony.  

• afghan is almost done! I'm crocheting it together and have done all the horizontals - now to go the other direction (and weave in the ends and stitch around the edge, etc. etc.) It sounds like a lot, but it's so much closer to done than it was as a bunch of piles of squares. I think I can get it done before it's too hot to work with it on my lap. Woo hoo! 
• I need to finish  Triangle: The Fire that Changed America before Sunday for book group. I'm not sure I'm going to make it... the sun is shining and as fascinating as Tammany Hall bosses and turn of the last century labor practices are, THE SUN IS SHINING. I'm still just at the beginning, which also makes it harder to go on -  something terrible is coming and I want to know but I don't want to know. 

my own super tuesday

AMARYLLIS IS STILL BLOOMING

This is the best picture I've been able to get of the Amaryllis so far. The red is so bright and ridiculous, cameras just don't know what to do. The flowers are gorgeous and on full blast right now, broadcasting at top flashy flower volume. 

MY SLOW CREEPING STOMACH VIRUS IS GONE (I THINK)

I've been feeling less than fabulous for over a week, which culminated in an abrupt, sweaty, nauseated departure from work on Sunday. As it often goes with a stomach virus, I felt much worse for a little while, slept forever and now feel so much bettter! huzzah. This poor cat picture has nothing to do with being sick and then well, it was just sitting here for another post I started and abandoned last week. 

RAIN BOOTS AT LAST! 

I really wanted some solid yellow or red ones, but these snazzy watermelon chevrons were available in my size for less than a gabrillion dollars and now they live on my feet all of the time. I never want to take them off.  I look forward to stomping in puddles and walking through mud like it's no big deal for a good long time. Yeah! 

IN OTHER NEWS: I finished the quilt I was working on - pictures as soon as I get them off my camera. 

movie movie movie the word has lost all meaning

My Oscar Summary:

Billy Crystal - terrible in ways I would not have predicted.
Angelina's leg -  I think she was goofing on everyone and I kind of love her for it. LEG OUT
Bret Mackenzie - BRET! That he won for work with Muppets makes it even better.
Emma Stone's  dress - she loved it so much that I LOVE IT TOO. 95% of all other gowns looked like Barbie Prom, why not have a little fun with a beautiful color and a giant neck bow?
The Rest: I was crocheting, but I did love Captain Von Trapp winning his award with his dashing mustache and generous thanks. I'm also curious what they bleeped out of Christian Bale's speech.

IN SHORT: Hugh Jackman, please come back! (it won't embed, which makes me sad.) Notice that by the end of his performance that the audience loves him - he's really bringing it and they respond with surprise and delight -  not the grim gutting it out of 2012's audience. Oh, Hugh. (siiiigh.)

These two videos below made me laugh - first the star-studded trailer for Movie: The Movie, put together by Jimmy Kimmell and some people willing to be very silly.  Gary Oldman should be in everything. After that, Making the Movie: The Making of Movie: The Movie. ha ha ha!

a word from Mrs. Hawkins

Mrs. Hawkins on editing:


A large part of an editor's job is rejection. Perhaps nine-tenths. In those days at least, it was not only rejection of manuscripts but of those ideas that seemed to come walking into my office every day in the shape of pensive men and women talking with judicious facial expressions about such mutilated concepts as optimist/pessimist, fascist/communist, extrovert/introvert, highbrow/middlebrow/lowbrow; and this claptrap they applied to art, literature and life to the effect that all joy, wit and the pleasures of curiosity were quite squeezed out. 


Muriel Spark,  A Far Cry From Kensington


More on this later, but I will say now that I enjoyed it very much. Mrs. Hawkins is one of the more memorable characters I've come across lately.

fold the cloth

Right now, this very minute (12:26 AM) I am listening to the Cate Le Bon album Cyrk and the song playing is Fold the Cloth - I'm enjoying the album so far.  This song's got a kind of psychedelic welsh hippie mama vibe, which I like.

I am having strange days! Part of the strange days condition (not officially recognized by the AMA or any official body) is that I'm having trouble articulating the reasons - but the results are that I've been a spotty blogger, a terrible email correspondent, etc. I haven't even been writing much in the journal I've kept faithfully for years. Maybe it's just a quiet time? I'm feeling a little more interior than usual. It's nothing bad - I'm not sick or depressed, just contained. Anyway, that seems like a feeling about to pass and I'm not sorry.  Spring is coming - the light lingers, the bulbs are pushing out of the dirt; we'll see what happens.

ocean views, accidental stabbing, and ebook bargains

    

went to the beach on Saturday - it was lovely, as always. I feel like I hardly went at all in 2011, so it was nice to get a visit in early this year - may it be the first of many.   There are a lot more photos but I still need to upload them -  haven't fixed my camera yet as none of the tiny screwdrivers I've acquired are tiny enough! I did discover that they are just the right size for accidentally stabbing myself in the index finger, though. GOOD TIMES! 

++++++++

Oooh - more ebook deals: Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere  for 2.99 on kindle, nook, and ibooks - this was the first Gaiman book I ever read and I have an abiding fondness for it. 

Jennifer Crusie's Welcome to Temptation/ Bet Me bundle is only 6.99 on kindle , nook, and ibooks. These are both romantic, fast, and funny full length novels - 6.99 for two is a good deal! 

These deals won't last long, so if you're interested, act soon. 

cats cats cats

Busby, looking handsome as always. He's such a good cat and has been very patient with insane kitten situations, which is why when he steals my spot like he did right here, I just let him have it and sit one cushion over. (insane kitten situations = all situations involving Otis, who has decided that the only way he likes to eat is from the same bowl as Busby at the same time Busby is trying to eat from it.)


Somehow in his kitten brain, granny squares are wily prey that must be stalked, pounced, carried in his mouth, attacked with hind claws, and hidden in his secret treasure hoard. (location of secret treasure hoard, and don't tell him I told you: top of the stairs by the shoes.)


It gets a little Gollum-y in the living room.


He snatched this one off the couch right after I put the border on it.

coming up

Winter flowers are blooming - these little white violets are some of my favorites - the purple violets haven't started yet. There were snowdrops (despite no snow), but my photo of them was too blurry. I'll try again tomorrow.


Rhubarb is emerging. When it dies back in the late summer/ fall, I never believe that it will come back,  yet it always does!

This week has been strangely out of time. I've had the cold that's been all over town - not as bad as some have had it, thank goodness, but bad enough that my nose is raw from tissue and I want to sleep all the time.  In the interests of doing the things I mean to do every day yet somehow don't, I've been using this calendar/list website. I like it! It's clean and simple and crossing things off is satisfying. I know I could probably set this all up inside a calendar program or something, but I like it this way. It's not one more thing to figure out, it's just typing and clicking and actually watering the plants.

In other news, I am now way behind on Devil in the White City and am going to have to do a lot of catching up before Sunday. It's beautifully written, but the serial killer freaks me all the way out. I know he's been dead for a long time, but still: MAJOR CREEPY. So far on the architecture side it's mostly been meetings, which while important are not particularly riveting. Frederick Law Olmsted doesn't shoot anybody or anything. (at least not yet!) My reading eye has been wandering, but I'm ready to buckle down now. It really is very good.

first paragraph

I just started The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America. I was worried at first that I'd left this book too long - the meeting for my non-ficton book group is a week from Sunday and non-fiction (depending on subject) takes me longer to read than fiction. But after reading this first paragraph I don't think I'll have any problem. It all seems very exciting! This quote's not even the book proper, but an author's note at the very beginning.

Evils Imminent

(a note)

In Chicago at the end of the nineteenth century amid the smoke of industry and the clatter of trains there lived two men, both handsome, both blue-eyed, and both unusually adept at their chosen skills. Each embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized the rush of America toward the twentieth century. One was an architect, the builder of many of America's most important structures, among them the Flatiron building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C.; the other was a murderer, one of the most prolific in history and harbinger of an American archetype, the urban serial killer. Although the two never met, at least not formally, their fates were linked by a single, magical event, one largely fallen from modern recollection but that in its time was considered to possess a transformative power nearly equal to that of the Civil War. 

Like I said: EXCITING. Can't you hear the movie trailer guy reading this?

Earlier today I finished The Magician King by Lev Grossman. It was so good! I'm still collecting my thoughts - right now they're bouncing around ("remember that part? so excellent!" etc.)  and I'm full of that good feeling a satisfying novel delivers.

sharp kitten teeth

I started writing about the books I'm reading now, but as happens every time I try to write about books lately, I got all tangled up so I quit. Tomorrow, so help me, I will pull it together and write about at least one book. (They're good books, even! it's not like I'm trying to cushion a blow.)     

                                                      

But tonight I bring you this picture of Otis, who is getting very tall! And very bad. What is it about kittens at this age and their love of walking on precarious ledges and climbing in houseplants and affectionately biting faces with their little razor teeth?  

five things

1) I just painted my toes An Affair in Red Square, which makes me think of the Pink Martini song Dosvedanya Mio Bambino

2) Water has tasted weird all week and I thought maybe I was getting a sinus infection, but it turns out that the city switched from our normal Bull Run (mountainy, wonderful) water to some weird ground water (groundy, tolerable) because of mudslides. Maybe it wasn't mudslides - I saw roiling muddy water on the news, but I wasn't really listening. ANYWAY. The important thing is that delicious Bull Run water will be back soon.

3) RAYLAN! BOYD! Justified is back on TV and I am so happy. Downton Abbey: I hate (but secretly love) that this show is making me soften my position toward evil Edith.  Also, why does everyone hate Mary? Even season 1 Mary had some redeeming features. I feel so sorry for Daisy - she got railroaded every which way for that wedding. (here endeth my cryptic manor house talk, except for one more gossipy thing: did you know that Julian Fellows -creator of Downton Abbey- is also an actor who appeared as pompous comic relief (Earl Kilwillie)  in many episodes of Monarch of the Glen?)

<--- this is what Raylan looks like when he explains things plain and simple to lowlifes and criminals, usually right before they go and do the thing he just asked them not to do. Since he also explained the consequences, I can't feel too bad for them. Crime makes you stupid.


4) earlier this week I went to the Title Wave Bookstore, which is where the library sells withdrawn items. I totally scored and got there when they were having an incredible sale on CDs. I got 2 box sets - the What it Is! Rhino collection and the Complete Stax/Volt singles 1958-1968 set for a very good  price.  They don't have the booklets, but as far as I can tell they're in good shape otherwise.
This song is on What It Is!


and both these songs are on the other:

(not this version, but I couldn't resist the live performance/ dancing studio audience.)

5) Otis the kitten is growing so fast he doesn't have the best control over his limbs or center of gravity; he's gangly and awkward like a teenager. (he's also ADORBS, so no worries that anything has changed on that front.) I'm sure the complicated parkour jumps and free running he plots in his head are flawless but his execution is a little off, which results in crashing and whining and more mad dash capering before anyone notices that he's knocked something over.

more wetlands

Here are the rest of the pictures from my visit to the Smith and Bybee wetlands. The sun was angled just right to get all these reflections, which I thought looked pretty creepy/cool. The path ended right here, covered in water. At first I thought it was flooded, but now I think it might just be where people put their kayaks in the water.



Bottom of a tree! Overexposed, which I fixed and then unfixed. It was one of those bright but overcast days.


Here's the sun behind a cloud with those camera marks that I hate so much. Guess what? I finally discovered what they are! It's DUST on the inner lens. It gets sucked in there when the lens extends from the body of the camera - apparently Panasonic Lumix cameras are especially vulnerable.  I found a great tutorial on youtube for taking apart my camera and cleaning things up, which I would have done already but all my tiny screwdrivers are broken. Soon!


It's this great natural wetland on one side of the road, and then industrial train yard on the other. I guess the birds are probably all used to the sounds associated with the trains. I don't think the trains care at all about the sounds the birds make.


The sun is eating these trees! This has fewer of the dust marks, but I can still see some on the left. Blue sky is THE WORST for these stupid marks to show up. I can't tell you how many photos they've ruined. But apart from that, I like this photo.

Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore from Moonbot Studios on Vimeo.


This animated short is lovely - it made me a melancholy kind of happy. I smiled many times but I also teared up twice.  It's 15 minutes long, so make sure you give yourself enough time to watch it all. I hope it wins in its Oscar category!