Hat of Many Colors

My young friend is modeling my new hat that my friend, Nana, made for me. She whipped it up in just one evening. Okay, it was two evenings but I swear she could have easily done it in one evening if she had no studying to do. Seriously. I picked out the yarn and Nana was going to show me how to knit something other than a dishrag. After a frustrating hour of trying I decided to quit and became resigned to that fact that I will never be an accomplished knitter. And I'm okay with that. Seriously.

Just Between Max and Tachio!

What's that ya got there? Give a poor ole' cat a look, would ya?
Ah, ice cream! I don't usually eat green stuff. Can I get a good smell?
Sniff, sniff! Hmmmm. Smells pretty good! Maybe I'll give it a lick!
Don't look, Mom! I'm eatin' outta da human spoon! Carpe diem! La dolce vita!

Self-Revelations

What are:
Wire-bound blank journals (line and unlined) and multi-colored micron pens
Fountain pens with fine nibs and an abundance of ink cartridges
Good sleeping pillows to stack up for reading in bed
Lots of pieces of papers in many colors with many textures
Bedside table lamps that can be turned off by gently yanking a chain
Perfumed lotion (especially peppermint spearmint, rosemary mint)
My library card and reading glasses
????
A few things that make me happy.

Knit Pickin'

My little green knitted dishrag took me 3 days to complete. The beginnings of a nice yellow scarf on the left, knitted by my housemate, took about 1 hour to get to the same length. Oh, well. I am a beginner, after all. Mom, this one’s comin’ your way!
A cold and dreary weekend in Knoxville. On Sunday a few friends and I celebrated Tracy’s 31st with a special McBirthday meal and then an entertaining movie. I’m not a huge fan of ridiculous comedy, so I’ve rarely seen Will Ferrell in any movies. This one, however, was very good and has received good reviews. Go see Stranger Than Fiction. We enjoyed it. Who knew Ferrell could play an IRS agent who causes feelings of compassion! :) I feel the same way about Steve Martin. I never much enjoyed his comedic movies but really liked him in Shopgirl. Ditto for Jim Carrey, who I thought was great in The Majestic.
Much like the weekend, it’s a cold and dreary day here in Knoxville. From this very average, blah day, I’m just
Lucy Blue

Two Kinds of Lap Tops!

Max has found a new buddy in my temporary housemate. :)
It turns out my friend might get to move into her new place next door sooner than expected, possibly this weekend. I have enjoyed having her in the house. Last night, I proposed that she remain in my house and we’ll send my son next door to live when he returns to town late next month. She is the perfect roommate: great personality, clean, respectful, knows how to cook (big plus), quiet, likes cats, and best of all (unlike my dear son), she has been educated in Trash 101. When she sees that it’s full, she takes it out.

The Proof is in the Paper!

I'm beginning to love my little stub scrapbook. It's a work in progress. Take my evening with Maya Angelous, for example. I recall feeling completely mesmerized by her voice. Everything she said, wise, important, funny, potent! I will soon journal her page with these thoughts. I plan to get caught up to 2007 and can paste and journal as I go. I'm thinking of dedicating a page to my ticket stub from the Michael Jackson concert I attended in 1984! :) That concert is, after all, responsible for a huge "about face" in my life. If I hadn't traveled from Atlanta to Knoxville for that concert, I wouldn't have the wonderful son that I am blessed with. We all have fateful events like this in our lives. Mine are not so special. Just interesting that this one intersects with Michael Jackson!

Same Song, Second Verse

You asked for a tutorial on how to make my friend Nana's famous Georgian (country, not state) mini meat burritos and you got it! What? You didn't ask? Well, here it is anyway. They are so good! If anyone wants the actual recipe then I can email it to you. This time I made Nana measure out ingredients using "American" measuring tools so I could write a recipe! The meat and rice mixture is simply that, grilled onions, chopped cilantro, salt, pepper, coriander and a little ground cilantro! Absolutely delicious. Nana prefers to dip hers in tartar sauce (yeah, I told her that stuff's for fish but she doesn't care) and I dip mine in a little ranch dressing. These days, I like to dip just about anything in ranch dressing.
I got a lot done over the holiday weekend, which was nice. I spent about four hours at the coffee house yesterday (yet I didn't drink any coffee, just tea). I completed a handwritten journal entry, a page in my art journal, and wrote two letters by hand for overseas friends. I also did a little reading and had a delicious bowl of soup. Geez! I sound about 80 years old, don't I! Well, so be it. There's something about dragging all my crap to the coffee house that inspires me to get things done. Maybe that's why the place was packed. Most were taking advantage of the free wireless but for me it's a time to put aside technology and get back to basics. Tomorrow I'll show you a page or two in my new "ticket stub" journal. I am really enjoying making lists these days (does that reflect upon my age?). Fun lists. I've made a list of all the countries I've visited in the order visited (an entirely too-short list) and a list of all my various jobs, states and cities visited, addresses, etc. My recent art journal page was entitled "I'd Like To Do More Of This List" and I had a lot of fun with it. So what would you like to do more of? A couple of things on my list was "walk in my neighborhood" and "swim" (I love to swim).
I did something I've never done last night? Intrigued? I let my friend cut 3-4 inches of hair off my head! She did an excellent job. Now I wish I had agreed to a few more inches. She claims to be able to give me a wonderful dye job but I'm just not there yet. Soon, though. I'm tired of yanking out all those damn gray hairs. I've decided to just let them take over for now. You have to get pretty close to me to see them. But I know they're there.....lurking among all the lovely brown hairs. And that's really all that matters.

The Way Things Happen

This morning, a co-worker called me and said that his father-in-law had died in the night. He was 93. He asked if I would get a book from his office and return it to the library as it was due today. I said sure. The book is called Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier and I’m on Chapter Three. :) I’ll renew it in my name today. Frazier also wrote Cold Mountain (I didn’t read the book but I loved the movie). Sometimes things that I read sound very profound and meaningful to me, irregardless of the storyline. Meaning just on their own. Bold and clear statements. This has happened twice in the first 22 pages of Thirteen Moons. The first instance was when I read these words of Frazier which, although relevant to the story, made an impression on me as if the only words on the page:
Survive long enough and you get to a far point in life where nothing else of particular interest is going to happen. After that, if you don’t watch out, you can spend all your time tallying your losses and gains in endless narrative. All you love has fled or been taken away. Everything fallen from you except the possibility of jolting and unforewarned memory springing out of the dark, rushing over you with the velocity of heartbreak.

Changes

Why can’t my downstairs desk look like my upstairs desk?
I began keeping my "books read" list in 2005 by trying to recall all the books I read in 2004. I remembered 16. I recorded all books read in 2005, which numbered 18. However (drum roll, please), I nearly doubled my book digestion in 2006 by reading 33 books, nearly 3 a month. Good for me. My goal for 2007? 40.
A friend of mine (who is moving into an apartment near my house but can’t move in until February 1) is going to live with me for nearly 3 weeks. This is going to be very interesting. I haven’t had a roommate since 1987 when I lived with a co-worker for nearly a year when N was 2 (so I could afford to rent a nice house in Stone Mountain, Georgia). My friend is 37 years old and a very nice, mature Ph.D. student. I suspect I’ll hardly know she’s there as she is quite studious. After living alone for nearly four years (since N went off to college), it may not be easy to transition to living with a "non-relative." On the other hand, my friend (who is from Georgia, the country, not the state) makes wonderful foreign dishes from her native homeland that I really love. She is going to teach me how to make stuffed bread (one with a bean mixture and one with cheeses). Sooooo good! On the downside, I suppose I'll have to curb my tendency to belt out Patsy Cline's "Crazy" at the top of my lungs while walking around the house. Yeah, I'm sure she'll appreciate that.

Please Step Away From The Candy!

This photo (featuring my friend, Tracy) is a prime example of why you should keep children out of food stores with displays such as this one. It's hard enough on us grown-ups!

Tidbits. So the weekend was certainly blah but not without a couple of outings. I waded through a typical cold over the holidays and now am left with that hacking cough that my lungs and bronchial tubes are so famous for. The cough is finally getting better but it has zapped every bit of strength out of me (evidenced by the fact that I actually drove 2.5 blocks to see some friends so I wouldn't arrive wheezing and coughing). I dragged my butt out of bed Saturday in time to treat my friend, Tracy, and her husband, Hua, to a celebratory lunch at the Green Hills Grille. My boss gave me a nice-sized gift certificate for Christmas so we enjoyed good food and good conversation. Tracy recently completed her master's degree, she and Hua recently celebrated their first wedding anniversary, and Tracy's birthday is coming up later this month. A good reason for a nice lunch outing. After lunch, some outdoor window shopping and a nice drive along Ft. Loudon lake admiring the day, I returned to my cocoon on the couch, where I wiled away the rest of the day. Sunday was much the same, venturing out only to see the movie, "The Freedom Writers." Go see this "true story turned movie". Very inspiring, especially for teacher-wanna-bees like me. I can only imagine, however, the daily fear that comes with teaching at schools known for gang violence and racial divides. The comic relief in this movie was the one white kid in Ms. Gruwell's classroom, who looked like he was completely terrified every second of the day.
I am nearly finished with The Good Life by Jay McInerney. The book is interesting in that it sort of plops you down in NYC in the days following 9/11, revealing what it was like for New Yorkers, their continuing fears, and their ability to exhibit resilence and fortitude in the face of such uncertainty. I would hesitate to call it "essential" reading, but it is an engaging novel. The author does reside in New York City and I imagine his "fictional" accounts are more truth than not.
Spring semester classes begin this Wednesday. Isn't it odd that "spring" classes begin in the middle of winter. Back in the "olden" days, when I attended UT, we were on the quarter system and this would be called winter quarter. Now that we are on the semester system it was either "winter" or "spring." In any case, my Elementary Chinese class begins again this week. Unfortunately, I've forgotten nearly all my vocabulary from last semester. My professor told me, in a phone call just before Christmas, that my pronunciation was very good. Oh, the pressure!

Boardwalk, Pelicans, Red Rocks and Books!

I just finished reading Joan Didion's book, The Year of Magical Thinking. This writer of novels and essays lost her writer husband in 2004 due to a sudden massive heart attack and a little less than 2 years later lost her 39 year old daughter, who died from multiple complications that began with a bad case of pneumonia. Didion is 72 years old. It's an interesting and honest view of the grieving process but, as you might imagine, a bit of a "downer" to read. It seems that I've chosen to follow that read with another "tragic" tale, albeit this one fictional. I'm now reading The Good Life, written by Jay McInerney (who wrote Bright Lights, Big City, which was made into a movie in which Michael J. Fox starred). This is a tale of relationships in the aftermath of 9/11 in New York City. One critic, Keir Graff, praises McInerney and states, "There have been a number of 9/11 novels lately, as writers grapple with what that terrible day means to us. This one is essential." Essential. I'll find out.

Laguna Beach

The drive to Laguna Beach was beautiful. We left the 1 around La Jolla and hit the 5 going north. The interestate pretty much stays close to the ocean which makes for some nice scenery. My brother not only recommended that we eat at a clifftop restaurant in Laguna Beach called Las Brisas, he also provided the money for a very nice lunch as a Christmas present. The meal was very good and we sat on the patio overlooking the ocean. It was a bit windy, which made it cold, but I survived in just a T-shirt and no coat. I would love to spend more time in the ocean towns along the sand and surf in southern California. My son is not one for walking along the streets, going in and out of stores (especially bookstores).
That night, in the hotel room, N convinced me to watch Saw III with him. I watched the first Saw movie and found it fairly intriguing, despite the grisly blood and guts action. Saw III, however, takes the cake, portraying absurd and horrific grisly acts carried out by a mad man and his pretty female accomplice. It also left t he door open for Saw IV, which I may see just to make sure the "little girl is found by her father in time." I would not recommend this movie to anyone over 30 years old. My 21 year old son, however, really liked it.
That night we had an excellent dinner at a restaurant in Mission Bay called "Nick's." I had shrimp scampi over rice and my son had shrimp and pasta. Very tasty, very good and a nice end to our little jaunt over to southern California. The next morning we packed up, checked out and drove to see the seals one more time. I would have liked to hang out on the benches overlooking the cove for a while but we still had a 5 hour drive back to Vegas looming and we had to figure out how to catch the 15 from LaJolla. Everyone in those parts refers to the interstates as "THE 5" or "THE 15." I've decided that's kinda cool so the next time I travel from Knoxville to Nashville, I'm gonna hop on the 40 and cruise on into town. :)

Sun, Surf and Seals

The day after Christmas, N and I drove to San Diego. The deal was that N would pay for the hotel room and I would cover the car rental (a very nice silver Dodge Charger; yep, it had a hemi) and gas and food and drinks and stuff. N got the better deal. He researched the hotel possibilities and made the reservation himself, choosing the Mission Bay Inn. It was a good choice. We were 3 blocks from the Bay and 2 miles from the ocean. The first thing we did was head to the ocean to watch the sunset. Amazing. I haven't been to San Diego since I was 9 years old and only remember the Old Town, the zoo and going to Tijuana where my mother expertly bargained for some marakas for ten cents (hey...it was 1970), even walking away and the guy came after her, agreeing to the deal. I have those green marakas on my shelf in my guest bedroom today. Ah, digression. Anyway......I had no idea the Pacific Ocean in southern California was so beautiful. I suppose I'm partial to the beautiful colors of the Gulf of Mexico. The waves were incredibly large due to a windy day and there were some crazy surfers trying to get in a few more rides before the lifeguard shut them down. That night we drove downtown to the Gaslamp District and enjoyed some great Mexican food. N and I both love Mexican food. The Gaslamp District is nice; very commercial and full of tourists.
On Wednesday we drove through Oceanside, alongside the ocean (duh), stopping for fresh bagels at the Buzy Bee Bagel shop. Continuing up to La Jolla, we came upon an overlook and although N didn't want to stop, I was driving and the driver rules the car. We stopped. Good thing, too. We spent a minute or two gazing out at the ocean beyond a small cove and beach and then it hit me. Oh my gosh, those are seals! :) I said, "N, look at all those seals!" He said, "Huh?" I said, "Those are seals!" (M R pigs, M R not, S M R......sigh, another digression). He started laughing because neither one of us actually understood what we were seeing at first. N thought they were just big clumps of sea weed. Apparently, it's pupping season and the beach was full of pregnant females. No pups yet.
Tomorrow pics of Laguna Beach and another great Mexican meal.

I flew into Las Vegas on Christmas Eve. The temp was very mild and only slight wind. After renting a car and dropping off luggage at my son's apt., N and I headed to Ellis Island for a $4.99 steak dinner. The next day we headed to the Red Rock Canyon for a little hiking and picture taking. What a beautiful day! I'm not much for desert landscapes but the red rocks really are amazing. We even saw a small herd (for lack of what they are called en masse) of quail. My son took great pictures and I'll post some when his computer is up and running and he can load them.
N worked on Christmas Day for 12 hours, beginning at 8:00 p.m. We headed to a new casino called Red Rock in southwest Las Vegas where N lives. Very nice place, completely with movie theaters and a bingo room (which we later visited but came away empty). Going to a casino on Christmas Day......well, it seems like there should be some sort of law against it, at least for Christians, right? There were people everywhere. Not exactly a reverent way to observe Christmas. But since what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, I think I'm okay. :) We saw In The Pursuit of Happyness, which was a very good movie about a real man and his son rising from homelessness to wealth. N and I don't often agree on movie choices so when I find one that both of us want to see, it's a unique opportunity.
N finally got off work at 9:30 a.m. Apparently there were many, many sick animals on Christmas Day, including one crazy lady who came in, asked N if he was the doctor and started screaming about her dog being helped. This may not have been such unusual behavior for an animal owner in distress but she then proceeded to lay down on the floor, continuing her behavior of frustration (you know, using non-Christmas Day words). N handles situations like this very well and calmly notified the manager of the facility who escorted Ms. Crazy outside.
We headed out for San Diego around 10:00 a.m. and arrived around 3:30 p.m. Pics and more on that later.