Summer Reading

My good friend Rug's Bug has a new blog where she talks about books, movies, and recipes. I think that's a great idea, and it got me to thinking about how I've been neglecting my reading since the twins took over my life.

I have a book log, a journal where I record every book I read, the day I finished it, and some general thoughts about the book. I started keeping the log three years ago -- the first entry is June 29, 2003, the day I finished Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

I highly recommend keeping a book log. I find that I tend to forget what I've read once I get three or four books down the road -- the plot, characters, even whether I liked the book or not, all begin to fade from my mind. It's nice to read back through the log and remember what I was reading a month ago (or a year ago).

I used to have a goal to enter at least one new book every month, but I've struggled with that over the last year. My last entry was May 3, 2006 -- I need to get some reading done! In order to inspire myself to read more, and to share some good reading suggestions with you, dear reader, I'm going to list for you the contents of my book log (minus comments). I've marked books I'd recommend with an asterisk.

*6-29-03: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
7-15-03: The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke
*7-26-03: Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
8-3-03: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
*9-22-03: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
10-5-03: The Fresco by Sheri S. Tepper
*11-30-03: Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
12-3-03: July, July by Tim O'Brien
12-9-03: Idlewild by Nick Sagan
12-31-03: The Simulacra by Philip K. Dick
*1-3-04: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
*1-25-04: American Gods by Neil Gaiman
1-28-04: Singularity Sky by Charles Stross
2-10-04: New Spring by Robert Jordan
*3-20-04: Life at Blandings by P.G. Wodehouse
4-18-04: The Memory of Whiteness by Kim Stanley Robinson
*5-30-04: The Confusion by Neal Stephenson
*6-1-04: The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket
*7-15-04: Ilium by Dan Simmons
7-25-04: Guardian of the Horizon by Elizabeth Peters
8-2-04: Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination by Helen Fielding
*8-22-04: Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris
9-6-04: Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
*10-22-04: The System of the World by Neal Stephenson
*11-24-04: The Reptile Room by Lemony Snicket
*12-??-04: The Wide Window by Lemony Snicket
*12-26-04: The Miserable Mill by Lemony Snicket
*5-6-05: The Egyptian by Mika Waltari
*6-??-05: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott
7-17-05: Olympos by Dan Simmons
*7-21-05: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
*9-1-05: A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
10-30-05: Latro in the Mist by Gene Wolfe
11-21-05: Knife of Dreams by Robert Jordan
12-16-05: The Serpent on the Crown by Elizabeth Peters
*12-31-05: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
*1-12-06: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Al Franken
2-10-06: I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away by Bill Bryson
4-11-06: Naked Pictures of Famous People by Jon Stewart
*5-3-06: The World According to Mister Rogers by Fred Rogers

Now let's all of us get reading. (I'd appreciate any reading suggestions!)

To the Nines: Mission Accomplished

Thanks to everyone who weighed in on the anniversary outfit debate. Your comments were all very helpful and insightful. And the winner is:


Top #1 with Dress #3! I know many of you were pushing for super-slinky Dress #2, but I just didn't think I could (or should) pull it off. Be sure you take notice of Airan's snappy new suit. (I picked out the green shirt and tie.)

The evening was delightful. We left the baby girls in Uncle David's very capable hands and had a lovely and elegant dinner at Tru. I talked Airan into taking surreptitious pictures of our seven-course dining experience with his camera phone, so y'all can share in the visual feast, if not the food itself.


Okay, so we actually forgot to take pictures of both the provencal parfait and the amuse-bouche, but every good meal must be accompanied by bread, right? We Americans love to fill up on the stuff. So here's my half-eaten bread. (It was delicious. I consider myself something of an expert roll baker, but their simple french-bread-style roll was beyond my modest skills.)


Next course: bento boxes of summer vegetable terrines and salads. (I think Airan had some gross seafood thing for this course.) Delightful! Of course, you can put marcona almonds on just about anything and I'll say it's delightful. (Except gross seafood.)


Asparagus and artichoke salad. The yellow stuff was amazing.


For the soup course, carrot and ginger soup served cappuccino style. I was a little nervous when it came in a coffee cup -- you know I'm no fan of the java. However, the soup was coffee-free. Thank heavens.


Fennel, spring onion, and robiola gratin. Cheese and crusty bread topping. You can't go wrong.


Israeli cous cous with summer zucchini ribbons and asparagus puree. My favorite course of the evening. Unfortunately, I was getting rather full at this point, so I think I only ate about half of it. I should have asked for a doggy bag.


Me enjoying my Israeli cous cous.


My main course: chickpea panisse, tomato marmalade, and crispy parsley. Meh. I didn't love it. Airan's main course was much better:


Coffee-scented California squab, chanterelles, puffed wild rice and farro with chile negro jus. Yum, despite this coffee-scented business. The thing was covered with strawberries, which seems odd but which was in fact delicious.


As the night wore on, my wine pairings started to stack up on me. How's a girl supposed to keep up with a new wine for every course? I was in big trouble by this point.


Cheese plate. We commonly dine on nothing but cheese, so strange cheeses are nothing new to us, but this was a very nice assortment of fromage. The best part -- the Roquefort. I think I could eat nothing but Roquefort for the rest of my life.


To prepare us for the never-ending dessert courses, the apricot tea shooter. So good!

Airan is a complete gentleman, so he was kind enough to trade half of his dessert plate for half of my dessert plate. So here's what I ended up with:


A citrusy bread pudding and raspberry upside-down cake.

And Airan had this:


Two chocolates, one of them delightful, the other buried in the flavor of coffee.

And to help us celebrate the occasion, Israel (our excellent waiter) brought out this (like we needed even more dessert):




And the desserts just keep coming!


I don't want to sound like I'm complaining, because I'm definitely not. It's just that, by this point in the evening, we had no room whatsoever for enjoying Gale Gand's sweet delights. Luckily, we got to take this batch of delightful morsels home.


And this is me, after seven courses' worth of wine pairings, very nearly unable to walk myself back to the car.

And because I was pretty easily amused by the end of the night:

Here's a nice shot of the crazy sinks in the bathrooms.

And the personalized menu they sent us home with (get out your magnifying glasses):

Overall, the evening was a rousing success! Now, I kept telling myself I shouldn't compare Tru to Charlie Trotter's, the only comparable restaurant Airan and I have had the good fortune to enjoy, but it was hard not to compare the two. I have to say that Charlie's is still the favorite of my heart, but Tru was an absolute pleasure from beginning to end.

And thus ends our 9th-anniversary celebration. Whatever shall we do next year? I'm entertaining suggestions.

An Everyday Irritation that Bugs Me Every Day

Dear readers, I'm not one of those grouchy grammarians who insists on eradicating split infinitives, who preserves the distinction between "who" and "whom," and who can actually diagram a sentence correctly. For an editor, I have only the most casual understanding of the rules of grammar. However, I do have a few pet peeves, as all editors do, and here's the biggest one.

Please, please, please acquaint yourself with the difference between "every day" and "everyday." These are not interchangeable. Every time you use "everyday," pause and think to yourself, "Do I really mean 'every day'?"

"Everyday" is an adjective. It means ordinary, something you might encounter with great frequency.

"Every day" means, literally, every day.

So I go to the market every day, and when I go, I wear my everyday shoes, not my fancy going-out shoes.

(I know that most of my readers, all three of you, don't need this refresher. Those of you who do need it, please take it to heart. The next time I see a misused "everyday," I fear blood will be spilt.)

Next time, we'll tackle "it's" versus "its."

Think About It

I was re-reading one of my all-time favorite books, Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, and I came across a passage I wanted to share with you.

The scientific way of thinking is at once imaginative and disciplined. This is central to its success. Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don't conform to our perceptions. It counsels us to carry alternative hypotheses in our heads and see which best fit the facts. It urges on us a delicate balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything -- new ideas and established wisdom. This kind of thinking is also an essential tool for a democracy in an age of change.

This fantastic book is all about the importance of critical thinking. It applies to everything from the claims of politicians to tales of psychics and UFO abductions to the next chain email to hit your inbox. ("Forward this to ten of your best friends right now or you'll be unlucky in love and mold will grow in your ears!")

The Demon-Haunted World changed the way I look at the world. I can't recommend it strongly enough. Get it! Read it!

To the Nines

On a lighter note, Airan and I will attain our ninth anniversary next week. To celebrate, we have reservations at Tru, one of the swankier restaurants in town. My big dilemma: What on earth will I wear?

Airan's all set -- he has fancy new suits that are just begging for an occasion like this. But my wardrobe has suffered terribly since I became a stay-at-home mom. I've decided that I will endeavor to piece together an acceptable outfit using what I have, but most of my going-out clothes were a perfect fit about 10 pounds ago. What to do? I'm asking you, dear reader, to help me decide.

The options:

Bottom #1: The flowy black skirt.


Pros: It's a lovely, lightweight skirt with sexy slits up the side, and it's floor-length, so I don't have to worry about my ugly bird legs. Cons: It's a bit snug. Also, kind of boring. Not really that sexy, despite the slits.

Bottom #2: The knee-length flippy black skirt.


Pros: Cute, fun, flippy. Cons: Also snug, and it shows off the lower, uglier half of the aforementioned bird legs.

Bottom #3: The jersey-knit black pants, complete with elastic waist band.
So comfortable.

Top #1: The purple-blue see-through flowy top.It's hard to see the color in this pic -- it's kind of an iridescent purple-periwinkle.

Pros: Won't show off the roll of fat around my midsection. Cons: I have no fashion sense, but something inside me tells me this isn't really what the cool kids are wearing. And yet, I like it.

Top #2: The flowery button-up.It's a lovely, light material, perfect for summer. However, something about the flower print says "80-year-old woman" to me.

Dress #1: Red Velvet.So fun. Lovely black-red velvet. Shows off those legs, though. And I wore it with a black jacket to Charlie Trotter's on our sixth anniversary, so I feel like I should go with something different.

Dress #2: Clingy black strappy thang.Seriously sexy. Shows off the rack, which is the only good physical feature I have left. Lovely with the pretty blue wrap I picked up in Hawaii. However, as its title states, this dress is clingy. All the new curves I've packed on lately will be on display for the world to see, and all the pretty blue wraps in the world won't help me. Maybe if I starve myself between now and Wednesday...

Dress #3: Black linen strappy thang.A decent building-block dress. Needs to be coupled with something, like that blue wrap, or maybe the purple-blue top (unless we've decided it's too unfashionable). Kind of boring, but maybe we could spice it up a bit. And the good news: it doesn't cling, so I can hide away a few of those extra pounds.

I'm sad to report that those are my best options. This task is beginning to seem hopeless. I think I need to just go out and buy a new wardrobe. Anyone want to nominate me for "What Not to Wear" so I can get that $5,000 wardrobe budget?

And what on earth I'll be doing with my hair -- that's a whole 'nother post. (I'm considering shaving my head; I think bald would be a good look for me.)

In Memoriam

I'm not trying to be melodramatic when I say June 24, 2006, was the worst day of my life. It just was. Airan and I said it to each other: "Today is the worst day of our lives." And it was. It is terrifying and depressing to know that there will most likely be worse days ahead, other loved ones lost, unless I should have the good fortune to go first. I don't know how much more grief I can bear.

The other thing Airan and I stressed to each other: This is how I want to go. If I'm sick, if I'm suffering, if I can't make these decisions for myself, let me go. Give me that gift. Don't force me to linger when there's no hope for happiness or joy or comfort in life. I just hope that, whichever one of us is faced with such a decision, we'll have the strength to go through with it.

I'm still having a hard time talking about it. If you call me and ask me how I am, don't expect me to bring up the topic. If you bring it up, expect me to dodge and avoid and change the subject. It's still too raw. It hurts too much. I'm progressing very slowly through the stages of grief. I'm going to need a long time.

What's in a name?

I heard a story on the radio a few days ago about violence in Indian-controlled Kashmir and reactions from the Indian government and Kashmiri separatists. I don't know much about Kashmir, its relations with Pakistan and India, or its struggles for independence.

So here's what I thought about instead: What must it be like to be from a place with a name instead of a label? I am from the United States. I'm a U.S. citizen. We call ourselves Americans, but we don't really have an exclusive claim on that label -- anyone from North or South America could call themselves American. I've seen us U.S. citizens referred to as USians, with seems ugly and totally unpoetic. But what else do we have?

Wouldn't it be lovely to be from a place with a name like Kashmir? To be called a Kashmiri? Of course, I'm not saying I want to live in a place with political unrest and separatist violence. I just like the way it sounds.

Talk to me, AB!

Today, I need your help.

I love Alton Brown. I love, love, love him. I'm a little bit obsessed with him. If I weren't married and he weren't married and Jon Stewart had rejected me horribly and I needed strong arms to comfort me and cook comfort food for me, AB would be my first choice.

(Obviously, this is a fantasy scenario. I am quite happily married. AB is married -- I can't vouch for the level of happiness in his marriage, however. Jon Stewart would never reject me, because the minute we met, assuming I weren't married and he weren't married, he would know that he was cosmically destined to be utterly devoted to me for all eternity. But suspend your disbelief for me, would you?)

Mr. Brown recently redesigned his Web site. It's been a pretty bare-bones site for a good, long time now. Months. I shan't complain. The site is pretty, and I'm sure AB has enough on his hands these days. However, the new site does not appear to include a Rants and Raves section, as AB's old site did. I loved his Rants and Raves! AB once wrote on his Rants and Raves page about how, if he were forced to choose only one food to eat for the rest of his life, he would choose cheese. And that was when I knew that AB was very nearly the fondest desire of my heart, right on the heels of Mr. Jon Stewart (who plays a distant second, of course, to dear, sweet, long-suffering Airan).

I've been trying to email AB to find out whether he plans to include R&R on his new site, but I'm not having much luck. AB doesn't post an email address on his new site, and my attempts to guess at what his email address might be have been unsuccessful thus far. If anyone out there knows AB's address, please pass it along.

UPDATE: AB's site now includes a section called Knowledge, which seems to take the place of his old Rants and Raves. I approve.

Three-quarters of a year already!

The girls are nine months old today! How did that happen?

Yale or Bust, part two

Well, it only took a month for Senator Obama to respond to my tirade about funding cuts for financial aid programs. (Still nothing from Senator Durbin.) Here's what the senator has to say:

Student loans provide critical financial aid for many. At the time I was attending college, financial aid was primarily in the form of grants. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. Graduates now have more and more difficulty keeping up with loan payments. At a minimum, our government has the responsibility to ensure that the most affordable and sensible loans are available to our students.

The federal budget should reflect the nation's priorities, and the priorities established in this budget are clearly out-of-touch with those of the American people. I understand the need to get our federal deficit under control. However, I do not accept that funding domestic priorities and restoring discipline to federal spending are mutually exclusive propositions. It is tragic that student loans have been targeted, and that our students must pay a disproportionate price for this misguided definition of fiscal responsibility.

I joined a bipartisan group of Senators who voted against this budget bill and its devastating domestic cuts, but it ultimately passed. I have attached my statement from the Congressional Record regarding Budget Reconciliation.

I hope that Congress can work in a bipartisan manner on reducing the federal deficit without turning our backs on important domestic programs that help the less fortunate. The cuts that Congress has passed will have serious consequences for millions of hard-working Americans.

In closing, the budget legislation is only one piece of financial aid policy. As you know, the Higher Education Act (HEA) is up for reauthorization. HEA programs primarily focus on student financial aid; services to help high school students to graduate and enter successfully college; support for higher education institutions; and teacher training. A three-month extension to the financial aid provisions of HEA has been passed, allowing for continuation until March 31, 2006. In the mean time, differences in the reauthorization provisions in the House and in the Senate are likely to be ironed out in conference. You may be certain I will continue to monitor the situation and keep our shared priorities on my mind.

I'm glad to know the senator shares my concerns, but I can't help but think this issue is going to be lost in a sea of important issues, and by the time my girls are ready for higher education in 2023, we'll be on our own to come up with funding.

UPDATE 09/26/2006: When I complained about it taking Senator Obama a month to respond to me, little did I know it would take Senator Durbin a full seven months to respond. Here's what he had to say:

Since you contacted me previously regarding the cost of higher education,
I wanted to share with you some developments in the Senate that may affect
this matter.

To help address the burden of college costs, I have introduced the Stop
the Raid on Student Aid Act (S. 2573). The Deficit Reduction bill that
was pushed through Congress by the Majority at the end of 2005 included
$12 billion in cuts to student aid. It was the single largest cut in the
history of financial aid programs. My bill would cut interest rates in
half for both student and parent borrowers, mandate regular increases in
Pell Grants, and allow students to consolidate their loans while still in
school in order to lock in lower interest rates.

I also have worked for tax deductions and credits to help families better
afford the cost of tuition and student loans. I am disappointed that the
Majority has allowed a tuition deduction to expire that could help many
students and their families pay college costs. I support renewing and
expanding the opportunities provided to families through the tax code.

An educated workforce is vital to our nation's security agencies. I am an
original cosponsor of the Homeland Security Education Act (S. 2450), which
would create scholarships for students who pursue bachelor degrees in
science, technology, engineering, mathematics, or critical foreign
languages and then go on to work in a security-related federal agency.

Both of these bills (S. 2573 and S. 2450) have been referred to the
Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions for further action. I
am not a member of that committee but I am committed to working with my
colleagues toward passage of these important bills.

I also am asking the Government Accountability Office to study the state
of the student loan industry. The proposed report would focus on whether
borrowers have been adversely affected by changes in lenders' business
practices over the past 10 years. I hope that the results of this study
will point us toward other legislative solutions to this troubling
problem.

Hard-working students deserve a chance to go as far as their talents will
take them. I will continue to fight to make college more affordable so
that Americans have an opportunity to improve their lives through
education.

Sincerely,
Richard J. Durbin
United States Senator