Goodbye, Summer

It's been quite a week. A good week. A busy week. A week fitting for the last week of summer. Monday was grocery shopping, for groceries I don't think I touched all week. It wasn't a good week for home cooked meals. Tuesday was packed with a client meeting then movie night; Los and I grabbed a much-need beer and some chips before seeing Tropic Thunder, which was a lot funnier than I thought it would be, and thus was one of those movies that made me feel just a little guilty that I wasn't watching it with Matt.

Thursday, we got to go to the Ravens game. Neither my boss nor her friend were using their season tickets, so Matt, Court, VJ and I watched the Ravens get spanked by the Falcons. Matt Stover was the highlight of the game; especially watching him try to tackle a running back. We girls were thinking both "YAY, MATT!" and "Please don't hurt Matt Stover!"

This week also marked the end of "summer hours" at work, where we got off at 3:30. I got out of there around 4pm and Matt drove us down to get my mom, who spent her birthday-weekend with us. On the way, we stopped at an antique shop, where I wandered around wide-eyed and reverent, running my fingers across treasured items once belonging to strangers. There were a lot of things I may have liked to have purchased, but settled on an old costume jewelry necklace and two books, a collection of short stories from 1939 and a 1927 edition of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse.

After collecting Mom and her things, we headed homeward, stopping at Noodles & Co. near our house for some dinner. (We intended to go to P.F. Chang's, but it was packed with adventurous suburbanites.) Either way, I was grateful for a good meal with some veggies, and it filled Mom's need for someone to place food in front of her. (She has little of my restaurant snobbery, but insists that she be served her food if going through the trouble and expense of going out, making places like Panera less favored.)

Saturday, Matt made a lovely (if not slightly late) breakfast of pancakes and scrambled eggs, then cleaned and did laundry while Mom and I wandered from store to store. At Michael's, she got some silk flowers; at Target, I bought cleaning supplies and yet another magazine; at Barnes & Noble, I bought Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver (I've already read the first essay, but will post about that later); at A.C. Moore, I contemplated -- but did not purchase -- sock yarn. We saw Mama Mia, which was sugary-sweet but surprisingly good, and left us both with ABBA songs stuck firmly in our heads. We popped into a funiture store and Hallmark, then met Matt and Don Pablo's for dinner. Mom got her fill of her favorite cheesy-good Mexican (-ish) food, we had a sweetheart of a waiter, and Mom got to wear the big black sombrero and have a restaurant full of people scream "Happy Birthday" to her.

After dinner, we wandered around Pier 1 a bit to digest, then further stuffed ourselves with Cold Stone Creamery. By the time we went to bed, we were fat and happy.


Sunday, we went to Crepe du Jour for brunch. I love Mount Washington in general and Crepe du Jour in particular. We sat outside, and I felt very French. After Matt, Mom and I stuffed ourselves with a steak, crepe and omlette respectively, we went to Hamden (hon). We stopped in Lovelyarns, where I let Mom pick out a lovely sock yarn (so I now need to learn to knit socks) and I bought a set of huge (size 35) wooden needles, and a skein of a mohair/nylon/wool blend, with which I'm thinking of knitting armwarmers for use in my office.


We also stopped into Salamander Books, where I purchased a copy of The God of Small Things and Julie & Julia, which I'm already sixty-some pages into. From Hamden, we dropped Mom off and headed back home, with me reading along the way, and enjoying the clutter of packages I made on the passenger-side floorboard of Matt's car.
And now that I'm home, I'm off to enjoy my new stack of books!

Knitting Olympics

Now that I successful knit a ribbed scarf (which only took me about six months), I decided to accept the Knitting Olympics challenge: cast on a new project during the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics, and be done by the Closing Ceremonies. So Court and I picked a project, went to Woolworks, got some yarn, and guess what?



I did it!

My project was the Split Neck Cap Sleeve Tee from Fitted Knits, and I used Jaeger Roma, a viscose/nylon/angora (bunnies!) blend. I learned all kinds of new skills, from starting a new ball of yarn, to knitting on circular and double-pointed needles, how raglan sleeves are constructed:
placing stitches on scrap yarn and picking them up later, picking up stitches on a finished edge, increasing by knitting front to back, yarning over, knitting two stitches together, and seaming eyelets into picot edges:

The pattern calls for a second color to be used for the trim around the arms, bottom, and neck, but I used the same color throughout. My only complaints are that it's a little wider than I anticipated, and I am not crazy how how the open neck looks. I wish I didn't add the extra stitches required if I had used a second color. I haven't found a good clasp yet, and am using a pin in the meantime.
That said, I learned a ton of stuff and am very excited about the idea of starting up a new knitting project! My next skill will be learning how to cable, and I just purchased a great pinkish wool to make a ribbed and cabled scarf.

Homeland and Other Stories

I finished this about two weeks ago and haven't taken it back to the library yet. Oops! But I wanted to have it on hand to blog about.

I've been a fan of Barbara Kingsolver since I got Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and was happy to hear that she had done some short stories. I really enjoyed this collection, though I'm worried I can't come up with anything more insightful than what's on the back of the book! Stories included in this collection are:

• Homeland
• Blueprints
• Covered Bridges
• Quality Time
• Stone Dreams
• Survival Zones
• Islands on the Moon
• Bereaved Apartments
• Extinctions
• Jump-up Day
• Rose-Johnny
• Why I Am a Danger to the Public

I like short stories in general because I love when an author can successfully establish characters, settings and tone in such an efficient format. None of the stories were plot-heavy; there isn't a lot happening, but they are well-written and compelling. I liked all of the stories because they include realistic, well-rounded, relatable characters. The girls and women in her stories don't have perfect lives, and in many cases, they are making hard life choices and enduring hardships in a way that has you quietly rooting for them as you read.

The stories I liked best were Homeland, which can't be described better than on the back of the book ("a child accepts the impossible responsibility of remembering her Cherokee great-grandmother's dying culture); Quality Time, a captured moment in time with a single mother and her precocious, mature young daughter, and Stone Dreams, where a discontent wife and mother, killing time with a lover, working up the will to define and pursue the live she really wants to live.

One of the next things I want to read is Kingsolver's book of essays... but first, I have to drop this off at the library!

Anyone Need Tomatoes?

I'm finally starting to see the fruits of my labors, literally! In my one tiny patch of yard next to my shed, the one little tiny spot that gets a bit of sun, I've managed to grow tomatoes. Lots of tomatoes!

Possibly a few too many tomatoes.

I'm planning on making gazpacho, homemade salsa, tomato pie, and probably lots of tomato sandwiches. Matt told me I sounded like Bubba Gump duing dinner tonight, with all my talk of the things I could do with our mini-crop. This is exactly the kind of success I needed, and now I'm terribly excited about trying again next year, for the next couple of years, and my next home, my next yard, my big sunny spot for a real garden one day.

Little Dan!

I must admit, I'm terribly jealous of Matt's brother and his girlfriend. They are both chefs, and both actively participating in the persuit of their passion, in a way I could only dream of being brave enough to do. They met in Colorado, considered California, moved to New York, and now have journeyed to Spain for a little less than a year. (I don't know how they'd feel about my giving too many of their personal details, so I'll refrain.)

They were in town for the past two weeks, so we did some family dinners: one at Matt's grandmother's/mother's

one at Aunt Gloria's, and last Friday Matt and I took Dan and Kim to Pazo for dinner. I was very pleased that they seemed to like Pazo... I really like it there and would've been heartbroken if they didn't like it! And Saturday, Matt picked them up, took them to the airport, and off they went on a great adventure in a different country. Did I meantion that I'm jealous? Well, I'm also terribly happy for them and wish them both lots of luck and love and I look forward to seeing them soon!

Hopefully, in Spain.