Friday, June 8, 2007
I am so fuh-reaking bored right now. I'm on the USA Jobs website searching for new employment and I'd estimate that 85% of openings listed in the sphere I'm searching are at the Department of Homeland Security (yuck), ALL the State Department civil service jobs are in Iraq and the International Activities Specialist position at the National Endowment for the Arts that I thought looked cool requires Russian or Arabic language skills. I think I might make a good "wild horse and burro specialist", no?
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Boy have my music purchases ummm...evolved over the years. I just left Border's with the new Daddy Yankee - that one's for Cesar, though I do fess up to some mad love for "Gasolina" - AND:
Which is probably as much for me as it is for Leila at this point. She has very interesting tastes in music (not at all shaped by her mother!) and often asks me to sing, and/or play "Ring of Fire", "Fulsome Prison" ("Pepe's Song") or "Walk the Line." Thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a Cash album with somewhat lighter themes in our collection. He was such a great story-teller through his songs, but I foresee a day in the not-so-distant future when I'm asked "why would he shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die?" I'm hesitant to buy a lot of the "Kindie Rock" (yes, that term is in the lexicon) discs out there, so long as she seems content with our adult music library (though we do like Dan Zanes a lot), but once she starts to comprehend more mature-themed lyrics, I may have to rethink that. We've got years ahead of us before that day comes. I hope...Last summer's must play single was Outkast's "Hey Ya," and for the moment, she remains into Bob Dylan (her father says I brainwashed her, but I grew up on him and she can too!) and she's just getting a feel for The Rolling Stones. I tried to interest her in Justin Timberlake, but she just picks the disc out of my stack and says "that's mommy's CD" rather dismissively ; )
Which is probably as much for me as it is for Leila at this point. She has very interesting tastes in music (not at all shaped by her mother!) and often asks me to sing, and/or play "Ring of Fire", "Fulsome Prison" ("Pepe's Song") or "Walk the Line." Thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a Cash album with somewhat lighter themes in our collection. He was such a great story-teller through his songs, but I foresee a day in the not-so-distant future when I'm asked "why would he shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die?" I'm hesitant to buy a lot of the "Kindie Rock" (yes, that term is in the lexicon) discs out there, so long as she seems content with our adult music library (though we do like Dan Zanes a lot), but once she starts to comprehend more mature-themed lyrics, I may have to rethink that. We've got years ahead of us before that day comes. I hope...Last summer's must play single was Outkast's "Hey Ya," and for the moment, she remains into Bob Dylan (her father says I brainwashed her, but I grew up on him and she can too!) and she's just getting a feel for The Rolling Stones. I tried to interest her in Justin Timberlake, but she just picks the disc out of my stack and says "that's mommy's CD" rather dismissively ; )Geeked out DC
Here's a snippet of a conversation I just picked up while I was strolling down Connecticut Ave.:
"I mean it's sort of like Jack Bauer...If Kiefer Sutherland had run for President..." I have no clue where the speaker was going with this, but it just sounded as if it had to be one of those only in DC conversations.
And speaking of only in DC...I have yet to get engaged whatsoever in the 2008 Presidential primary race - if the debates aired at 9:00 after Leila's abed, I might try to put a bit more effort into it - but I did drop by a Hillary rally last night and am now feeling slightly more motivated. I'm still not sure I want her to be our nominee, and I still flirt with Obamania now and again, and when it comes strictly to policy issues on the table Edwards is my boy, but I did feel the energy generated from the "historical movement" to elect our first woman president. Plus, she's comes off as being so polished and you really do feel she's committed to diplomacy and restoring America's good name in the greater world when she speaks. The Post did a fairly amusing write up of the event (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/06/AR2007060602520.html?hpid=topnews "It is not every day that the words "moon bounce" and "Madeleine Albright" appear in the same press release..."), so I won't recap. I did snap a pic of Katherine McPhee on my camera phone - well, of her partially obstructed by the fence through which she was signing autographs as people filed out. Don't know why! Her performance was pretty terrible - though I heard a tweener muse "she was better than the old guy" ("the old guy" was Babyface!)
"I mean it's sort of like Jack Bauer...If Kiefer Sutherland had run for President..." I have no clue where the speaker was going with this, but it just sounded as if it had to be one of those only in DC conversations.
And speaking of only in DC...I have yet to get engaged whatsoever in the 2008 Presidential primary race - if the debates aired at 9:00 after Leila's abed, I might try to put a bit more effort into it - but I did drop by a Hillary rally last night and am now feeling slightly more motivated. I'm still not sure I want her to be our nominee, and I still flirt with Obamania now and again, and when it comes strictly to policy issues on the table Edwards is my boy, but I did feel the energy generated from the "historical movement" to elect our first woman president. Plus, she's comes off as being so polished and you really do feel she's committed to diplomacy and restoring America's good name in the greater world when she speaks. The Post did a fairly amusing write up of the event (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/06/AR2007060602520.html?hpid=topnews "It is not every day that the words "moon bounce" and "Madeleine Albright" appear in the same press release..."), so I won't recap. I did snap a pic of Katherine McPhee on my camera phone - well, of her partially obstructed by the fence through which she was signing autographs as people filed out. Don't know why! Her performance was pretty terrible - though I heard a tweener muse "she was better than the old guy" ("the old guy" was Babyface!)
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
I think this is the picture for the father's day card. I'd forgotten how fun it was to clomp around in daddy's or mommie's shoes...Whilst shoving gummy candy into our mouth of course.
Or we could go with this one, but the dad's surfer girl tee is somewhat obstructed by our handle bars.
Or we could go with this one, but the dad's surfer girl tee is somewhat obstructed by our handle bars.
And just for good measure, let's demonstrate how good we're becoming at imaginative play. I love that each member of the potato family - mommie (the bunny - she brings her to me and says "here's you mommie"), daddy and Leila - gets their own serving of craisins.
Monday, June 4, 2007
In sickness and in health...
Ugh! Was up all night listening to dear husband cough. I empathise with his pain, yes, but he is quite possibly the loudest cougher ever. He tried to be thoughtful and go downstairs, but in our close quarters, not a huge help. I did manage a doze long enough at some point to dream that I ran into Bill Clinton sitting alone at an outdoor cafe in Shirlington, but I am a zombie. Somehow, when it is your child who is sick at night adrenalin kicks in and you do what you have to do, but when it's your husband, it falls more into the annoyance category. And before I'm chastised for cold-heartedness, let me point out that he's had this cough for days, and he only could have aggravated it by going to hit golf balls in the driving rain yesterday to avoid going to brunch with my family!! Needless to say, I have made a Dr's appt. for him this afternoon.
Nothing much newsworthy about our weekend. My biggest thrill was getting in and out of the grocery store with purchases totaling a mere $108.40. We tend to average out b/t $130 and $150 ($160+ if it's a rare Whole Foods week) plus $80 at Target every other week when the diaper run is necessary, so I felt pretty good about my shopping success yesterday! We ran Leila out to the Tyson's Cartoon Cuts Saturday morning and her bangs are now about 1/2 inch long thanks to her squirming and fussing about. If anyone has an alternative idea for kids cuts, please let me know (Luigi won't touch her yet!) Followed that up with a brief visit to a McLean playground -- we are determined to hit every playground in the greater metropolitan area this summer -- and did a little Old Town strolling and fish 'n chips dining (Eamonn's does a great room temperature pour of Guinness complete w/ shamrock etching FYI) Saturday night. Yesterday was pretty much a washout, but I heard my new favorite Leila-ism: "flash my sumbrella" for open my umbrella??? Umbrella is "sumbrella" b/c in her Spanglish thinking the melding of sombrilla and umbrella somehow makes sense, but "flash" - where'd she come up w/ that one?
And as an addendum to my book list, there was some surprise that I did not note The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, which I did love and simply thought there may be enough universal accolades about it out there. I look forward to reading his new novel later this summer. Another that I had intended to include is Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clark. It may take an odd duck like me to get into 1,000+ pages on dueling magicians during the Napoleonic Wars, and it did take me a good couple months to read last summer, but I just found all the characters to be so fantastic (how fabulous to have a mischievous faerie called "the man with the thistle down hair"...). Once it sucked me in, I got completely lost in the tales of magic and faerie enchantment. And I did watch the movie version of Little Children Friday. It's very well done, but may be even more entertaining if you haven't read the book. There was some crucial character development that was just glossed over (likely for the sake of keeping it to a 2hr frame), and some may find the narration off-putting. Patrick Wilson is a pretty pretty man though. All American w/ a receding hairline yes, but pretty pretty eyes, and there's almost something a bit Jude Law like in the delicate lines of his nose and chin. OK - Enough with that!!
Nothing much newsworthy about our weekend. My biggest thrill was getting in and out of the grocery store with purchases totaling a mere $108.40. We tend to average out b/t $130 and $150 ($160+ if it's a rare Whole Foods week) plus $80 at Target every other week when the diaper run is necessary, so I felt pretty good about my shopping success yesterday! We ran Leila out to the Tyson's Cartoon Cuts Saturday morning and her bangs are now about 1/2 inch long thanks to her squirming and fussing about. If anyone has an alternative idea for kids cuts, please let me know (Luigi won't touch her yet!) Followed that up with a brief visit to a McLean playground -- we are determined to hit every playground in the greater metropolitan area this summer -- and did a little Old Town strolling and fish 'n chips dining (Eamonn's does a great room temperature pour of Guinness complete w/ shamrock etching FYI) Saturday night. Yesterday was pretty much a washout, but I heard my new favorite Leila-ism: "flash my sumbrella" for open my umbrella??? Umbrella is "sumbrella" b/c in her Spanglish thinking the melding of sombrilla and umbrella somehow makes sense, but "flash" - where'd she come up w/ that one?
And as an addendum to my book list, there was some surprise that I did not note The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, which I did love and simply thought there may be enough universal accolades about it out there. I look forward to reading his new novel later this summer. Another that I had intended to include is Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clark. It may take an odd duck like me to get into 1,000+ pages on dueling magicians during the Napoleonic Wars, and it did take me a good couple months to read last summer, but I just found all the characters to be so fantastic (how fabulous to have a mischievous faerie called "the man with the thistle down hair"...). Once it sucked me in, I got completely lost in the tales of magic and faerie enchantment. And I did watch the movie version of Little Children Friday. It's very well done, but may be even more entertaining if you haven't read the book. There was some crucial character development that was just glossed over (likely for the sake of keeping it to a 2hr frame), and some may find the narration off-putting. Patrick Wilson is a pretty pretty man though. All American w/ a receding hairline yes, but pretty pretty eyes, and there's almost something a bit Jude Law like in the delicate lines of his nose and chin. OK - Enough with that!!
Friday, June 1, 2007
Summer Reading
First off, and unrelated to books, I am really digging Gnarls Barkley's cover of the Violent Femmes' "Gone Daddy Gone" these days. Something about it just makes me feel like I'm 13 again listening to the Femmes and B-52s on my pink boom box on my parents' porch during a rousing game of pictionary or trivial pursuit with the neighborhood kids late into a sticky summer evening...Anyway...
I was counseling Massi yesterday on which Salman Rushdie books she should pick up when she's next in the Strand, and it got me thinking that I should do a dump of some of my favorite reads in recent years, because I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels lost in the bookstore at times. If you do have any interest in becoming a Rushdiephile, of those I've read, my order of preference goes:
The Moor's Last Sigh
Shalimar the Clown
The Satanic Verses
The Jaguar Smile (non-fiction about Sandinista Nicaragua)
The Ground Beneath Her Feet
Fury
If you just want a little taste of Rushdie, you can't go wrong with Shalimar the Clown or The Moor's Last Sigh. And if you have no interest in him whatsoever, some other books I've really enjoyed follow below in no particular order. I am currently a mere 32 pages in to Robert Fisk's: The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, because I do, every now and again, feel compelled to gain a better understanding of our world. All other reading materials will be dropped; however, on July 21 when Harry Potter hits my doorstep!
March by Geraldine Brooks (an imagined tale of the absent father from Little Women - recounts his service as an army chaplain during the civil war and all the ghosts he faces as a result of this service interspersed with moments in the lives of Marmee and the girls. Just finished it last night. It's really quite compelling and creative. As is A Year of Wonders by Brooks - A novel about the plague, yes the plague and it's good.)
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (a young boy's love affair with books leads him to a twisty, Gothic scavenger hunt in post-Franco Barcelona. Largely contributed to my insistence that we hit Barcelona on our recent trip to Spain.)
The History of Love: A Novel by Nicole Krauss (beautiful tale about the tangled web of connections that link two people and about the power of writing, words and yes, love.)
What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller (or, one could just rent the movie. The strength of Blanchett and Dench's acting captures the mood and tone better than any book to screen translation I've seen. A perverse, lonely, dowdy, psychologically controlling teacher tells of the fall from grace of a younger colleague resulting from an affair with a 15 year old student.)
Little Children by Tom Perrotta (I expect to watch the movie this weekend, so I'll report on how it matches up. Suburban angst and temptation amongst housewives/househusbands and the paranoia that strikes when a pedophile moves into said suburban community.)
The Ruins by Scott Smith (In a word - terrifying. And skin crawling - literally. Hang up any notions of an adventure tour of the Mayan ruins of Mexico - or to any jungle-like setting - after reading this one.
A Simple Plan by Scott Smith (Completely different from the Ruins, but equally horrifying and suspenseful. The devastating train-wreck and psychological unwinding that results from the decisions made after 3 men discover 4 million some dollars in wrecked plane in the snowy backwoods of middle America.)
American Gods by Neil Gaiman (one may have to be a bit of a sci-fi, and/or David Lynch geek to appreciate this one, but it blew me away. The gods of the old world face off with the gods of the modern age in this wild trip through America's roadside attractions.)
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (as well as The Interpreter of Maladies. I know "Kumar" takes on the role of Gogol Ganguli in the movie version, but don't let that put you off. A tale of the multi-generational immigrant family experience and of coming to embrace one's name/heritage.)
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (pure magic. Then again, I read this during the first trimester of pregnancy, so my emotional reaction may have been stronger than under normal circumstances, but I fell hard and fast in love with this one. And w/ Henry the time traveler.)
The Secret History by Donna Tartt (Somewhat in the mode of A Simple Plan. The psychological unwinding of a sometimes too tight knit group of college Classics students as a criminal situation spirals out of their control. And don't bother with Tartt's The Little Friend, that was a tedious one to get through!)
I could probably go on and on, but really should do something work related! Do feel free to contribute personal faves as I'm always looking for additional reading inspiration.
I was counseling Massi yesterday on which Salman Rushdie books she should pick up when she's next in the Strand, and it got me thinking that I should do a dump of some of my favorite reads in recent years, because I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels lost in the bookstore at times. If you do have any interest in becoming a Rushdiephile, of those I've read, my order of preference goes:
The Moor's Last Sigh
Shalimar the Clown
The Satanic Verses
The Jaguar Smile (non-fiction about Sandinista Nicaragua)
The Ground Beneath Her Feet
Fury
If you just want a little taste of Rushdie, you can't go wrong with Shalimar the Clown or The Moor's Last Sigh. And if you have no interest in him whatsoever, some other books I've really enjoyed follow below in no particular order. I am currently a mere 32 pages in to Robert Fisk's: The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, because I do, every now and again, feel compelled to gain a better understanding of our world. All other reading materials will be dropped; however, on July 21 when Harry Potter hits my doorstep!
March by Geraldine Brooks (an imagined tale of the absent father from Little Women - recounts his service as an army chaplain during the civil war and all the ghosts he faces as a result of this service interspersed with moments in the lives of Marmee and the girls. Just finished it last night. It's really quite compelling and creative. As is A Year of Wonders by Brooks - A novel about the plague, yes the plague and it's good.)
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (a young boy's love affair with books leads him to a twisty, Gothic scavenger hunt in post-Franco Barcelona. Largely contributed to my insistence that we hit Barcelona on our recent trip to Spain.)
The History of Love: A Novel by Nicole Krauss (beautiful tale about the tangled web of connections that link two people and about the power of writing, words and yes, love.)
What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller (or, one could just rent the movie. The strength of Blanchett and Dench's acting captures the mood and tone better than any book to screen translation I've seen. A perverse, lonely, dowdy, psychologically controlling teacher tells of the fall from grace of a younger colleague resulting from an affair with a 15 year old student.)
Little Children by Tom Perrotta (I expect to watch the movie this weekend, so I'll report on how it matches up. Suburban angst and temptation amongst housewives/househusbands and the paranoia that strikes when a pedophile moves into said suburban community.)
The Ruins by Scott Smith (In a word - terrifying. And skin crawling - literally. Hang up any notions of an adventure tour of the Mayan ruins of Mexico - or to any jungle-like setting - after reading this one.
A Simple Plan by Scott Smith (Completely different from the Ruins, but equally horrifying and suspenseful. The devastating train-wreck and psychological unwinding that results from the decisions made after 3 men discover 4 million some dollars in wrecked plane in the snowy backwoods of middle America.)
American Gods by Neil Gaiman (one may have to be a bit of a sci-fi, and/or David Lynch geek to appreciate this one, but it blew me away. The gods of the old world face off with the gods of the modern age in this wild trip through America's roadside attractions.)
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (as well as The Interpreter of Maladies. I know "Kumar" takes on the role of Gogol Ganguli in the movie version, but don't let that put you off. A tale of the multi-generational immigrant family experience and of coming to embrace one's name/heritage.)
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (pure magic. Then again, I read this during the first trimester of pregnancy, so my emotional reaction may have been stronger than under normal circumstances, but I fell hard and fast in love with this one. And w/ Henry the time traveler.)
The Secret History by Donna Tartt (Somewhat in the mode of A Simple Plan. The psychological unwinding of a sometimes too tight knit group of college Classics students as a criminal situation spirals out of their control. And don't bother with Tartt's The Little Friend, that was a tedious one to get through!)
I could probably go on and on, but really should do something work related! Do feel free to contribute personal faves as I'm always looking for additional reading inspiration.
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