06.28.04

Candle Goodness

Posted in Uncategorized at 12:51 pm by Anne

I got one of these last night and it is the best ever candle on the planet. I want MORE!

mmmmmm…tuberose

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Memorial

Posted in Uncategorized at 11:54 am by Anne

This weekend a lot of my family is flying out to hold a memorial for my father. At first I thought it might be completely unstructured, with everyone getting together and eating and celebrating Dad but now I am thinking there should be more to it. Not any scripture, necessarily, but maybe a passage or two. I need to get with my Mom and siblings and find out what they think about it. Any ideas?

My Mother in Law attended a memiorial where at the end everyone released a helium balloon but somehow I believe the idea would make my Dad puke. No birds either. O laws!

And as for memories to share, I have tons but they are small and bits and pieces unlike my brother’s. Now he has some great stories to tell about growing up with Dad. So what the hell happened to me? I don’t know exactly.

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Beauty

Posted in Uncategorized at 10:14 am by Anne

FAHRENHEIT TEDIUM: Well, I broke down and went to see the Michael Moore movie. I was expecting to be outraged, offended, maddened, etc etc. No one told me I’d be bored. The devices were so tired, the analysis worthy of something by an intern in the Nation online, the sad attempts to blame everything on Bush so strained and over-wrought even the most credulous of conspiracists would have a hard time giving them the time of day. This won the top Cannes prize? Only hatred of America can explain that. The one thing that did interest me was part of Moore’s technique. Much of the movie focused on various objects of hatred: Bush, Cheney, Bush pere, et al. The camera lingered for ever on their facial tics, it used off-camera moments where anyone looks awkward and dumb, it moved in with grainy precision in order to help the audience sustain and nurture its hatred. It was like the “1984″ hate sessions. Cheap shots would be an inadequate description. This was tedious propaganda, using the most ancient of devices, and reflective of a pathology that can only be described as unhinged. (In that respect, eerily similar to Mel Gibson’s recent piece of hackneyed, manipulative pornography.) I’d address the arguments, if there were any. There weren’t. There was just a transparently failed attempt to construct conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory on the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence, and when the entire framework was teetering into absurdity, the occasional necessary lie. I left before the end. A bar in Ptown on a Sunday night was more interesting.
-Andrew Sullivan

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HolyMoly

Posted in Uncategorized at 8:57 am by Anne

My rattled and completely wigged out pregnant brain has gotten all frazzled for nothing. The baby shower is not going to happen until the middle of August and as such I don’t need to sweat it right now. So forgive me, no more references for another month.

Meanwhile, this morning I am waiting for a client to return my call. He dropped off a slew of samples last friday but since his company hasn’t paid an invoice since April, he is going to learn the hard way that his report won’t be done until they get caught up.

So there’s that. I’m hoping it won’t be as unpleasant as I think it will be.

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06.26.04

other cake

Posted in Uncategorized at 9:31 am by Anne

Okay. I think I have decided to bake this cake as well. In case some of the bats don’t like chocolate. Plus, it looks kinda tasty in a very easy to prepare kind of way.

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06.25.04

correction

Posted in Uncategorized at 8:08 pm by Anne

Better news,I think there will be at the most, 23 people. Not so bad after all!

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Baby Shower

Posted in Uncategorized at 3:03 pm by Anne

So I am trying to come up with a complete menu for my friend’s baby shower next month. So far:

exotic fruit tray (HAH) with special sweet fruit dip
crudites with savory dipping sauce
finger sandwiches: egg salad, pimento cheese, tunafish or cucumber
triple citrus fruit punch
key lime tarts
and the End All Be All chocolate decadence triple layer cake with hazelnut ganache filling and a silky shiny chocolate icing

There will be 25 ladies in attendence, 28 total I guess and all I need to decipher is amounts for all these people. It could be crazy. I am already thinking that I will either need to bake two identical cakes (UGH) or bake an additional variety to the chocolate. Surely everyone won’t want chocolate will they? Aw crud. Maybe I’ll just suck it up and bake two. That would be the right thing to do. I’m just glad my friend likes chocolate as much as I do, although, I make idyllic coconut cakes and lemon ones too.

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Double-speak

Posted in Uncategorized at 3:01 pm by Anne

No, I don’t think Al Gore has lost his marbles. He’s as sane as he always was - just proving why he lost the last election, despite massive advantages. Tim Perry compares Gore’s latest statements with what he has said before. Two beauts:
“They dare not admit the truth lest they look like complete fools for launching our country into a reckless, discretionary war against a nation that posed no immediate threat to us whatsoever.” Al Gore - June 24, 2004

�Even if we give first priority to the destruction of terrorist networks, and even if we succeed, there are still governments that could bring us great harm. And there is a clear case that one of these governments in particular represents a virulent threat in a class by itself: Iraq. As far as I am concerned, a final reckoning with that government should be on the table.” - Al Gore, Remarks To The U.S. Council On Foreign Relations, Washington, DC, February 12, 2002.
Tim has more.

-Andrew Sullivan

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Krispy Kreme

Posted in Uncategorized at 12:35 pm by Anne

Last night after supper I wanted something sweet. So I say to my husband, “You know what sounds good? A little softserve with chocolate syrup from DQ” He shook his head but admitted that a Krispy Kreme sounded better to him. And so who am I to argue? All I had to do was call the local one and find out how late they were open.

Midnight! Do they all stay open that late?

We loaded up and got a dozen glazed, still piping hot and melt in your mouth heartbreakingly tasty. Last night Lily entered the fold and became a donut fan.

After that we stopped over at an Uncle of Shan’s house to borrow a trailer. Though it was approaching Lily’s bedtime and though her face was smeared with sugar glaze, we stayed to visit a while. It stretched into an hour-long visit with Lily just overwhelmed with joy. You see, this uncle and aunt have twin grandchildren, girls, about 4 years old. They had converted the living room to an enormous rambling play area complete with great bins of toys, a huge cast-iron bathtub full of pillows and blankets(for reading and playing in), a gorgeous old timey set of connected school tables and chairs (like a row of seats in a movie theatre kind of), and Lily had free reign. It was hilarious to see her take it all in and move from one toy to the next with reckless abandon. And such a permissive environment too, something only a grandparent can provided I guess. Towards the end, she found an old stale box of cookies that she wanted to get into and devour. Instead, Aunt Lu brought out a fresh box of vanilla wafers and let my little animal reach in with BOTH hands and cram as many as she could into each paw. I was almost embarrassed but then I remembered she is only a year and a half (nearly), and her social skills are still on the up and up.

Getting her to bed last night after a serious bath was pretty easy.

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06.24.04

Another Bad Mother Moment

Posted in Uncategorized at 11:50 am by Anne

Now this one is crappy for sure and probably ranks close to number one of poor mothering.

To begin with, the office where our computers stay, is not completely baby-proofed. Shan’s desk has no locking mechanism so often when I type, Lily will go to his drawers and pull things out. CD’s, packing tape, film canisters, etc. Just recently Shan objected to me allowing her to get into his things, which is completely reasonable, and I agreed to do a better job of keeping her out.

I compiled a little bag of her toys and placed it over by my side of the office. She likes to crouch down by the HEPA filter on the floor and take turns trying to force her toys into the machine, something fortunately that will never happen.

Today, as I emailed a few blokes, she resumed her position at the foot of my desk, playing with this and that. I had broken the new rule and allowed her to snag a few things from Daddy’s desk first, though, and didn’t notice for a few minutes what she had actually grabbed.

Well.

I look down and she is playing with this clear plastic lid. It was thin like a pencil. “What is that?” I thought. When I reached down to get it, I knew exactly what it was. The damn cover to an X-Acto knife. In fact, she had either taken the handle apart (the two other metal pieces were by her) or found the separated pieces herself. Either way, I knew the blade had to be around someplace and it completely freaked me out.

And there it was. On the floor by her Dad’s desk. A very sharp and partially burned (Looks like Shan had run it in front of a flame for some reason) X-acto blade.

I checked her hands and everything else for evidence of cuts but thankfully she had left the blade alone.

So another close one whiffed past and now I have a new plan for babyproofing. If I can’t keep her completely out of his desk then I at least can remove all the potentially hazardous items within.

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