Miscellany

1. am New York and I are totally on the same page about the World Cup:I may not know who the favorites are. I'm pretty sure I don't understand all the rules. But I'll certainly be watching.

2. In order to make some extra money I've been working for the US Census--which, if it were a permanent job would drive me to alcoholism in no time flat--and that means that I now how to deal with the management office of the apartment complex where I live. Which is staffed by some of the most unpleasant people I have ever encountered in a professional capacity. So in preparation for having to get information from them tomorrow I am baking them some of the most fabulous cookies in the world. Not thanks to my baking skills--the recipe is just that good. I dislike the people in management so much that I'm having a tough time coming to grips with giving them cookies though, so this had better inspire them to be nice to me.

3. I'm moving in a couple months and while I'm only going to another area of the city, I'm trying to use it as an opportunity to get rid of things I don't want. It turns out that I'm quite good at getting rid of clothing and very bad at getting rid of books. Even books that I bought for 50 cents because I liked the covers and am never, ever going to read. I think that I'm going to need my sometime roommate to go through them with me and remind me that it really is a good idea to pass on books that I didn't even remember I owned in the first place.

What I'm Reading, etc.

The nice thing about writing a blog pretty much entirely for one's own benefit is that you don't have to feel guilty when you step away for, say, a month and a half. I felt like I was so crabby all the time and I wasn't particularly enjoying writing about my own crankiness so I can't imagine it was in any way interesting to read about. But I've since managed to plant myself in a cheerier place. So I'm back, if not with anything particularly substantive. But here are a couple things I've read recently:

Google and the New Digital Future

The terms of the settlement will have a profound effect on the book industry for the foreseeable future. On the positive side, Google will make it possible for consumers to purchase access to millions of copyrighted books currently in print, and to read them on hand-held devices or computer screens, with payment going to authors and publishers as well as Google. Many millions more—books covered by copyright but out of print, at least seven million in all, including untold millions of "orphans" whose rightsholders have not been identified—will be available through subscriptions paid for by institutions such as universities. [...]The negative arguments stress the danger that monopolies tend to charge monopoly prices. Equally important, they warn that Google's dominance of access to books will reinforce its power over access to other kinds of information, raising concerns about privacy (Google may be able to aggregate data about your reading, e-mail, consumption, housing, travel, employment, and many other activities).

Adam Gopnik on J. D. Salinger

In American writing, there are three perfect books, which seem to speak to every reader and condition: Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, and The Catcher in the Rye. Of the three, only Catcher defines an entire region of human experience: it is—in French and Dutch as much as in English—the handbook of the adolescent heart.

I don't, as it happens, entirely agree that these books speak to every reader. Gatsby, for example, didn't particularly speak to me at the time I read it. Perhaps it would now. Like so many people, I read all three books when I was fifteen or sixteen. Huckleberry Finn was the one I loved and is, along with Moby Dick, my Great American Novel. Catcher did speak to me, but I think it's far less universal than Gopnik claims. Rather, I think it's a book that one often has to read at a certain point in life, in a certain state of mind. For the most part Holden Caulfield doesn't speak to adults. That's why he can speak so clearly to teenagers. Surely that's not a bad thing.

Dribs and Drabs

So much to say and so little time to say it. Isn't that always the story. A few things:

• I like to talk but don't definitely don't love to hear myself talk. Still, I loved listening to the Performance Club audio that Claudia just put up. Despite cringing when I heard my own voice (I find that so unnerving) I liked revisiting bits of conversation with more distance from the performance and also hearing things I missed. And selfishly I hope that these audio recordings are done for more events, particularly ones I can't attend with the P. Club, because the post-show conversations are such an enriching experience for me and it would be fun to sort of eavesdrop when I can't take part. 
  

• I'm really enjoying New York magazine's "Vulture Reading Room." I have no desire to read Charlotte Roche's Wetlands. It sounds genuinely awful, and not in a fun way but in a just-plain-atrocious way. But reading about it has been genuinely entertaining and this back-and-forth particularly so. Hopefully they'll continue the feature for other books. 

• My younger sister is hiking the Appalachian Trail right now and the other day she did 29 miles. Seriously. In one day.  I, meanwhile, walked to Central Park and, entering from the southeast,went up around the Great Lawn, and back. I promised I'd hike with her for a few days later on, you see, and I need to train. So far? Not such a good start. 

• PEN World Voices has started and as always I'm looking forward to it. Although it's a disappointment that the NYPL doesn't seem to be taking part this year as their panels, etc. are usually particularly interested. Tomorrow--today, really--I'm going to watch a panel about women translating women. I'm looking forward to that.

Tea Party Robocalls?

I just got a robocall that asked if I was aware of the "tea parties" taking place around the country and asking me to "please take notice today." I've gotten a lot of robocalls in the last year, but I have to say, this one reached new heights when it comes to awkward reading.

Also, if I'm going to attend a tea party I require tea and scones at the very least. Maybe some nice pastries.

Notes from the Homefront

1.) The night I got in to Buffalo, my brother (who is 18 and has Down Syndrome) asked me to give him back his Ultimate Spiderman comics. My father took them away ages ago because my brother isn't always so good at recognizing the line between fact and fiction, and stashed them somewhere in my room. I don't know where though and even if I did I wouldn't give them back. So I told him that I didn't really know what he wanted from me and a few minutes later, I got this note:

Ultimate
theef
bich
you
took
my things

Now obviously it would be better if he were writing me nice notes, but being able to express himself in writing like that is a pretty new thing so we're all pleased (and amused). It's particularly nice because it's not like anyone ever taught him how to write "bitch" so he obviously sounded it out on his own.

2.) My father took me to a Sabres game while I was home. Fortunately they won, if in an unnecessarily ugly way. Last time I went to a Sabres game in Buffalo was the ice bowl last year. There were an awful lot fewer people yelling, "You suck, Vanek!" this year. Also, we got ice cream, which makes any day better.


3.) My parents have what appears to be an infestation of excessively stupid mice. Not only have they set up residence in a household that has a fairly talented feline hunter, either the cat has taken to putting them there, which we doubt since he's previously shown a preference for eating his kills, or they keep drowning in the dog's water bowl. 5 dead mice between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Thankfully there were none in the week I was home.


4.) I am now in possession of a passel of new plants which I will hopefully manage not to kill. The first is a bamboo plant that was a Channukah gift from my brother. We don't actually exchange Channukah gifts, but he couldn't wait until Christmas to give it to me. The other two are cuttings from other plants.

The bamboo (obviously).

A cutting from my sister's Rat Tail Cactus,
which will hopefully not die since it really didn't cure long enough.
They end up looking really neat.

A cutting from my grandparents cactus,
which they've had for over 30 years
and just cut down for the umpteenth time.

5.) I'm glad there was snow when I arrived because the rest of the week was so warm and damp that it all melted and a lake formed in the backyard. On Sunday morning it was so windy that tiny rippling waves were running across the pooled water and you could feel the wind pushing against the car as my sister and I drove toward New York City. Briefly, around the time we passed Rochester, it looked like it was going to clear up. A sharp streak of lighter sky appeared at the horizon, as if the lid of a pot were being lifted up. Instead the rain came back.


6.) Driving up to the Holland Tunnel totally sucks.

iGoogle and Other Miscellany

Apparently I'm now part of Google's experiment with iGoogle that has left-hand navigation and this canvas view thing. As you can see above. My gmail doesn't work as well nor does my reader and it makes everything look more cramped and crowded when I'm not looking at a specific app. So basically I think it sucks and I'm not terribly happy to be stuck with it. Just saying. 

Amy, at Shots off the Crossbar, linked to a not entirely shitty Bucky Gleason article in the Buffalo News. My least favorite sports columnist starts out pretty well, but can't help ending up in the usual Bucky zone of stating the blindingly obvious:

See, at times, this job becomes one. You become so accustomed to seeing great athletes perform at the highest levels that, after a while you forget how to cheer. Over time, I guess, objectivity stole one of the things I liked most about following sports, having a rooting interest.

Stop the presses: Bucky is out of touch with the common fan? Somewhere along the line he stopped getting it? I imagine it's too much to hope that he takes this realization and remembers it while covering the Sabres this year. Every time he begins to write something that condescends to the fans he should take a moment and remember what it's like to be a fan. And by that I don't mean what it's like to be a fan of Drury, Briere, and Campbell. I mean what it's like to be a fan of a team. Yeah, I'm not holding out much hope. (Side note to the Buffalo News: Copyedit better. That last sentence I quoted could be a bit less awkward grammatically, no?)

My previously balding cat now has peach fuzz on his formerly bald patches and is looking rather less ugly. I may be treating the symptom not the disease, but at least he's a bit less ugly. 

Blather

As I write this my cat is kneading my bare leg with all ten of his stubby little front claws. Itake it to be a painful commentary on its firmness, or lack thereof. Getting in better shape is one project that's fallen largely by the wayside as I've spent most of the summer "resting" my ankle. I'm going hiking the first week of August no matter what, so hopefully the problem joint continues on its current path of slow but steady improvement. I go back to the personal trainer on Thursday but I'm going to be good and wear my hated ankle brace.


This summer is turning out to be much busier than I anticipated which is good, but also frustrating in that I haven't gotten things I intended to done. And it's not going to happen this week because my parents and brother are in town starting tomorrow. Which I'm totally excited about because my dad almost never comes into the city (not that it's not nice to see the others as well).


I went to a party in Bushwick on Friday night and on the subway ride home, sat across from an African American guy wearing a Canucks hat with the stick-in-rink logo. That's something you don't see every day in Brooklyn. Maybe he's from Vancouver originally? Either way, it was awesome.


The weather has been decidedly bearable so far this year. I went to the beach on Saturday and it was gorgeous. The weather that is. Coney Island isn't gorgeous but it's good enough for me.


I'm reading Amanda Vaill's Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins right now. I wanted to learn more about how his Judaism, and his at times conflicted feelings toward it, influenced his work. So far though I'm mostly learning more about his sex life (knowledge I could generally have lived without as it hasn't been much related to his choreography thus far).


And that's about it. Hopefully more interesting stuff to write about in the near future as I realize that was all less than fascinating.

Say Ow.

So I sprained my ankle nearly 4 weeks ago and it's been getting steadily better. For the last couple weeks I've pretty much been doing everything I normally do, with the exception of wearing heels. So it came as a surprise when I woke up at 6 o'clock this morning with the front of my ankle really hurting. I could barely walk. So after making sure the cats and birds had water and waking my father up at 7 in the morning to ask if I should see a doctor right away, I took a cab to NYU's immediate care center.

Now I've sprained my left ankle many times and never been to a doctor about it. Generally speaking, I'm much more likely to be all, "well, why can't I climb that mountain on a bum ankle," than to feel like I should go to the doctor. But I've never had an ankle get much worse so suddenly weeks after hurting it. Anyway, I arrived at the immediate care center at 8:30 and was out of there about 2 hours later. They checked it out, did x-rays, and confirmed that it is just a sprain. I've been instructed to abuse my ankle less and wear an air cast when I'm out walking around. So apparently standing/walking for hours each of the last few days was not my best decision.

At least the weather's not so nice that I feel bad about sitting around at home resting the damn thing.

Heading out...

So Friday and today have been, shall we say, not my best days. On Friday I had a dental appointment that was the most painful I ever had. And here everyone said that the procedure is less painful on the bottom teeth than the top. They were apparently supposed to give me Motrin beforehand, but it seems that everyone assumed someone else had done it, and by the time the Novocaine began to wear off, with the hygenist still working away at my teeth, the pain was pretty bad. When they finally did give me the painkillers, just before I left, they gave me 800 mgs, which is the same thing I got when I had my wisdom teeth out. And about an hour and some warm salt water later I could actually function. Which is good since I had ballet tickets with a friend (more on that later).

Then, Saturday, I headed off to the airport so I could meet my family in Maine for a vacation full of hiking and walking about. But I missed the last stair on the subway and sprained my left ankle for what must be about the 10th time. I didn't have time to go home and get the stuff I would need to take care of it properly without possibly missing my plane, so I spent the hour and a half train ride just trying to keep it elevated and hobbling from F to E to AirTrain and through check-in. At the airport, by the gates, I was finally able to buy some ibuprofen and get a cup of ice that I could wrap in a bandanna and use to ice my ankle. It may turn out to be a good thing that I brought extra books on this vacation—rather long books as well. Hopefully it'll improve quickly; I always find it difficult to tell on the first day. And I haven't actually looked at it yet, although even through the sock I can tell it's pretty swollen.

Anyway, updates may or may not be scant due to being on vacation—I don't know how much free time I'll have or if I'll have internet access. When I get around to it posts on Top Girls, Jerome Robbins ballets at NYCB, Stoner, and more are coming. I'm sure my one or two readers are delighted...

Enjoying Spring

The weather here has been a bit schizo--one day it's gorgeous and the next it's cold and raining--which has been totally tiring. But Saturday was a totally lovely day, so when a friend texted to suggest having a picnic in Central Park, I was all about that. I went to the post office first and spent 45 minutes on line--oh the joys of NYC post offices on Saturdays--only to be told that they couldn't help me, so I was pretty cranky. But getting to the park cheered me right up.

Because I don't live near Central Park I kind of forget to go up there regularly. Then whenever I do get there I remember how fantastic it is. It's not the same as being able to put on a some hiking boots and go trekking through the woods but it's still pretty damn nice.

This and That (once more)

I was reading today's Alistair Macaulay review in the New York Times and I realized he had just described exactly how I feel while watching the Boston Bruins play hockey. Which is why I'm thoroughly grateful that I won't be doing so again until next fall.

While you watch, you begin to feel that Bill Clinton probably eloped with Michelle Obama long ago, that the problems of Palestine and Iraq and Afghanistan must have all been sorted by now, that whole generations of human life have passed and aliens have surely taken over the planet and then departed, all while you are stuck there in the theater trying to find the least interest in watching the same tepid floozies doing the same limp steps.

Well, maybe it's not exact--I am, after all, generally sitting on my couch in front of the television when I watch the Bruins--but it's pretty damn close.


Also, this is neither here nor there but too absurd not to share: My roommate's parents just had to buy a new toilet after her mother clogged their old--as in about 70 years old--toilet by accidentally flushing a large and very hard meatball. Yes, really. No, meatball is not a euphemism in this story. The toilet had to be taken apart completely and was so old it couldn't be put together again. That, my friends, is one hell of a meatball. Let this be a cautionary tale for you all--keep meatballs far away from the bathroom at all times.

Weird News

Ok, so I might be the last person to read about this but honestly, that poor, poor crazy woman. I think that we should all take a moment to be grateful for the fact that we have someone in our life who would get us help before we lived in the bathroom for two years and/or sat on a toilet for so long that our body fused to it.

More Miscellany

Just a few thoughts from your resident absentee blogger:

1. Finally replaced the old, falling apart whale stickies on the bottom of the tub.
Quite an improvement, I think. My roommate and I agree that they make it look a bit like we have a 5 year old living in the apartment but we love them anyway. Besides, look at the color of our tub (also the sink and toilet). Our bathroom needs all the cheering up it can get.


2. Dmitri Kalinin makes my heart hurt. I want so much for him not to struggle and he's just playing really bad hockey right now.


3. I'm so glad that Christian won Project Runway. I liked Jillian's work as well, but I thought Christian put together a wonderful show. And this dress was fucking amazing (although not the most amazing picture of it):
I loved this as well, particularly the hat:


4. Over the weekend I baked Italian olive bread. My sister gave me the recipe but told me she found it a bit bland and would probably substitute whole wheat flour for about half the recipe. I didn't really feel like doing that but in the end I agreed that it was slightly boring although it had a nice texture. I think next time I'll either try adding in some whole wheat flour or I'll use more olives to make a really olive-stuffed loaf. I'm also thinking that sourdough bread with black olives would be delicious.


5. I also made a maple-pecan cake, which has the advantage of looking quite pretty.
I like the cake a lot but hate the frosting. It's maple and vanilla flavored and has a kind of sticky, marshmallow-y texture which I don't enjoy. If anyone has any suggestions on a frosting that would go well with a maple-flavored cake feel free to leave them in the comments.

Absentee Blogging

Things have been busy around here in a decidedly non-fun way this week. Work is a bit crazy--not so much hectic as frustrating--while I've had some family stuff going on as well. And today I had oodles of fun trying unsuccessfully to deal with the local board of elections. I also spent my free time this week watching the entire first season of Brothers and Sisters (next up, Friday Night Lights). The result of this is that I don't actually have much of anything interesting to blog about.

So instead you're getting my itty-bitty and definitely late New Year's Resolutions. I don't actually like the holiday and I don't normally make resolutions, but I've been having one of those months when I feel like my life could use a little organization. And here they are:

• I will read no more than three books at once. I know it's not unusual to read a bunch of books at once, but I feel like it's interfering with my enjoyment of the books. Right now I'm in the process of reading:
• Memoirs of an Anti-Semite
• Empire Falls
• The Evening Land
• The Book of Daniel
• I, Claudius
• The Towers of Trebizond
• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
• Homo Faber
• An ARC for a book my company is publishing in the spring
• I will get rid of the books I will never, ever read and only took in the first place because they were free.
  
• I will brush the cat at least once a week. It's easy and he loves it so there's no excuse not to do it.
  
• I will pack a lunch more frequently than I buy one. Because I could really use the money.
• I will clean the bathroom on a regular basis (I totally think this counts as a big resolution).

And really I think that's quite enough, no?

Martial

For reasons unbeknownst to me, we here at Your Paper Boats have been getting a lot of traffic this month. And by a lot I mean more than 10 visitors a day. And it only took us a year and a couple months to reach this point. Surely this must be one of the fastest growing blogs on the world wide web! We're so proud of ourself that we feel the need to use the royal "we."


Seriously though, I am getting more visitors then I normally do (which doesn't take much) and I haven't been posting all that regularly, and my posts have included silly pet pictures, so I'm not sure what people are actually reading here. But in an effort to entertain whoever is stopping or stumbling by, here are some epigrams by Martial (taken from Norton's World Poetry anthology). Because there's nothing like an insulting poem to give your day that extra zing.


YOU ARE A STOOL PIDGEON
trans. Kenneth Rexroth
You are a stool pidgeon and,
A slanderer, a pimp and
A cheat, a pederast and
A troublemaker. I can't
Understand, Vacerra, why
You don't have more money.


SURROUNDED BY EUNUCHS
trans. William Matthews
Surrounded by eunuchs and limp as a tissue,
Alma blames hi Pollia for bearing no issue.


AGRICULTURE
trans. Fred Chappell
You've planted seven wealthy husbands
........While the bodies were still warm.
You own, Chloe, what I'd call
........A profit-making farm.

Back Home

I don't get to Buffalo often--generally about once a year--but it's always nice when I do get up here. So in the spirit of holiday cheer, here's a partial ist of things I love about my parents' home:

• The totally fantastic mattress in my bedroom
• Home-cooked food that I didn't have to cook for myself (my mother made an awesome Apple Blueberry Pie for my sister's college grad party)
• The best dog in the whole wide world (even if she does try to hog my bed)
  
• Actually having people to drink wine with while standing around the kitchen
• A living environment that, unlike my apartment, isn't 80 degrees
• free washer and dryer
• driving a car
• not having to always lock the door and carry keys around
• board games
• the ability to steal other people's clothing
  

I know this is less than interesting, but I've just been content and lazy these last couple days so I haven't had that much to write about. I doubt anyone really has time to read blogs right around now anyway.

Ode to Ovens Old and New

I feel like buying an oven is my first really big adult purchase. I bought an appliance so I must be a grown up now, right? Of course it was also quite necessary and I'm totally excited to have a new oven. Our old one was about 45 years old, so to say that it was time is quite the understatement.

It was a charming shade of avocado green--not captured in all it's vibrancy in these pictures--and possessed of peeling paint.

Dating from the days before self-cleaning ovens, and owned by lazy people who rarely cooked, its interior was less than immaculate.

It was none of these features, however, that convinced us to dump our faithful oven for a younger, sexier model. Sure, it may have been nearly a quarter-century older than either of us, but we like to think we could have made the age difference work. Sadly the oven had a fatal flaw. Whatever doohickey regulated its temperature no longer worked, so it was always either off or on it's way to 525 degrees. The only way to control the temperature was to monitor it with a thermometer and open and close the oven door--all the way because you couldn't open it a crack the way you can a young, fit model--and you just can't bake that way. Everything comes out icky and unevenly cooked. Or it burns on one side and not on the other.

So it was that we bought a new oven. And while we bought the stove Consumer Report rated at the best value and it is by any definition a cheap stove, it is an unavoidable fact that compared to the old stove it is rather beautiful.

Oh, and if anyone reading this has ever wondered what the floor under something that hasn't been moved in over forty years would look like, wonder no more. It would look like this:
Lovely, huh?

Sweet Honey in the Rock

You know those colds that just hit you suddenly--one second you're fine and the next you feel like absolute shit? Yeah . . . I have one of those. I was fine until about 3 o'clock today and then BAM! So more than anything I wanted to go home and crawl into bed. Wasn't possible though because I had to meet my grandmother for dinner and a show.

Yesterday, when I was feeling fine, I'd chosen a Chinese food place. About the last kind of food I want when I'm sick. So it's fortunate that the place turned out to be quite good. The food was arguably a bit on the bland side but I'm pretty much the queen of bland food so that's fine with me. Anyway, what I liked was that the food was not greasy or oily. And the asparagus I had with my meal actually had some crunch to it still. Very nice.

Anyway, we were going to see Sweet Honey in the Rock at Carnegie Hall. If you're not familiar with them, and I certainly wasn't, they're an African American female a cappella group. They basically sing spirituals, hymns, gospel, jazz, and blues. I'm sure I've mentioned before that I'm not in any way religious. And my tolerance for most religious things is . . . limited, let's say. My tolerance for religious music like gospels, hymns, and spirituals on the other hand, is nigh endless. So that stuff was fine.

Less fine was the mother earth, light in the soul, just being good and kind to each other will bring about world peace stuff. I don't do well with that sort of tripe at all, particularly when I've got a sinus headache and my nose is running like a faucet. Still, the music was very lovely, they're incredibly talented women, and it was a nice evening out.

This and That

I'll be traveling to my aunt and uncle's for the holiday, where I'll see a whole bunch of family, so after today things will be silent here for a few days. Though I imagine most people will be doing cooler things than looking at my blog anyway. Not that that's difficult.

And speaking of cooler things, here are some of the things I've been reading lately:

HLOG has the preview for Breakfast with Scot up. The movie looks fairly sweet and it's nice to see the Leafs, and, shock of shock, the NHL doing something slightly forward thinking by giving the movie their approval.

One of my favorite dance blogs, Apollinaire Scherr's Foot in Mouth, has a discussion going on about choreographers and the audience here, here, and here, which has given me lots of stuff to think about.

The New York Times has a very positive review of the Dylan biopic I'm Not There. I have no idea if I'll like the movie, but I'm very much looking forward to seeing it anyway.

Well, have a good holiday folks.

Death at a Funeral and other assorted things

OK, honestly, I don't know how people go out and do things with other people every day and don't go batshit crazy. Granted a lot of my "out with other people" this past week was "out with family" which is particularly craziness inducing, but I kind of just want to hide in my apartment for the foreseeable future--except for tomorrow when I'm meeting Kir and Jenny after work--and pretend people don't exist.

Also, I just shelled over money for rent, a massive vet visit, and some other things and am feeling rather poor. So clearly what I need is retail therapy? Not so much--and I'm not a happy shopper anyway--but I do need to go shopping for some nice fall/winter work clothes in the next week or so.

Anyway, yesterday my aunt and I went to see Death at a Funeral based on my grandmother's enthusiastic recommendation. It often seems to me that my grandmother likes much more than she dislikes, so it might have occurred to us that this was a mistake, but naturally we failed to consider that.

It's one of those comedies that relies on everyone running about acting like complete idiots. If even one or two people behaved as though they had a brain in their head there would be no movie because the conflict would simply be solved. And I hate movies like that. I just don't understand the justification for choosing stupidity over good plotting. So while there were funny moments, it was more often painful. Rather glad I'm not the one who paid for it.