fun

in which I celebrate Pat, Mad Housewife wine, and roses

This afternoon I teased Pat Padley because he was excited to appear in a blog post today. I told him that he appeared in my blog months ago, and nary a peep from him. Here’s the picture:

I asked these goobers to pose for me, and this is what I got

He claims that I called him a goober and that doesn’t count, so here’s another one — one of my favorites from the CNMC MMX. Pat and Steve were having too much fun:

So there, Pat. Now you just have to find someone else to post your mug, and you’ll have a hat trick 🙂

In other news, I picked up a bottle of Mad Housewife Cabernet Sauvignon the other day. I totally did it because of the name and a timely visit by my mother-in-law. It was supposed to be funny…ok. Whatever.

Anyway, a sudden storm and frankly, a lack of interest in anything other than fooling around on Twitter led me to popping the cork. Oh! It’s actually pretty good. I paid about $9 for this bottle, and it’s just fine, thankyouverymuch.

too hilarious
the cork says "dishes can wait! dinner be damned!"

So the wine is pretty good, for a cheap wine (defined by Rachel Balducci as anything under 10 bucks, but not quite the 2-buck-chuck that seemed to appall the distinguished Sarah Vabulas). CatholicDrinkie should take notice: it’s not a bad little table wine.

So here’s to the ladies and gentlemen (and Jerry) who drink virtually with me on Twitter. A toast to getting together in real life and clinking the glasses!

cheers!

And finally, the rose explosion continues in the back yard — there are tons of little buds celebrating their own little porch party this fall, and so I’ll take advantage of the title of the post and present this to another Pat, who often makes me smile, kind of like the rose explosion.

It’s Banned Books Week! read something scandalous!

So I totally took this list from this American Library Association site. I’ve read the ones that are bold. I have to wonder what had people’s panties in a wad … but yeah, some of them had some themes, ya know?

*1. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
*2. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
*3. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
*4. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
*5. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
*6. Ulysses, by James Joyce
*7. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
*8. The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
*9. 1984, by George Orwell
*10. The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner
*11. Lolita, by Vladmir Nabokov
*12. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
*13. Charlotte’s Web, by E.B. White
*14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce
*15. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
*16. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
*17. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
*18. The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
*19. As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
*20. A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway
*21. Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
*22. Winnie-the-Pooh, by A.A. Milne
*23. Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
*24. Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
*25. Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
*26. Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
*27. Native Son, by Richard Wright
*28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
*29. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
*30. For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
31. On the Road, by Jack Kerouac
*32. The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway
*33. The Call of the Wild, by Jack London
*34. To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf
35. Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James
*36. Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin
*37. The World According to Garp, by John Irving
*38. All the King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren
39. A Room with a View, by E.M. Forster
*40. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
41. Schindler’s List, by Thomas Keneally
*42. The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton
*43. The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand
44. Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce
*45. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
46. Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf
47. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum
*48. Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D.H. Lawrence
*49. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
*50. The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
51. My Antonia, by Willa Cather
52. Howards End, by E.M. Forster
*53. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
54. Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger
55. The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie
56. Jazz, by Toni Morrison
*57. Sophie’s Choice, by William Styron
58. Absalom, Absalom!, by William Faulkner
59. A Passage to India, by E.M. Forster
60. Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton
*61. A Good Man Is Hard to Find, by Flannery O’Connor
62. Tender Is the Night, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
63. Orlando, by Virginia Woolf
*64. Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence
*65. Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe
*66. Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
*67. A Separate Peace, by John Knowles
68. Light in August, by William Faulkner
69. The Wings of the Dove, by Henry James
*70. Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe
71. Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier
*72. A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
73. Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs
*74. Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh
75. Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence
76. Look Homeward, Angel, by Thomas Wolfe
*77. In Our Time, by Ernest Hemingway
78. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, by Gertrude Stein
79. The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett
*80. The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer
81. Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys
82. White Noise, by Don DeLillo
83. O Pioneers!, by Willa Cather
*84. Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller
*85. The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells
*86. Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad
*87. The Bostonians, by Henry James
*88. An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser
*89. Death Comes for the Archbishop, by Willa Cather
*90. The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame
*91. This Side of Paradise, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
*92. Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
93. The French Lieutenant’s Woman, by John Fowles
*94. Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis
95. Kim, by Rudyard Kipling
96. The Beautiful and the Damned, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
*97. Rabbit, Run, by John Updike
98. Where Angels Fear to Tread, by E.M. Forster
99. Main Street, by Sinclair Lewis
100. Midnight’s Children, by Salman Rushdie

Anyway, celebrate our freedom of expression and the importance of reading — for the right reasons. Read a book. and then, do something even crazier — talk about it with someone.

I’m gonna do that tonight. In fact, maybe I’ll read something really far-reaching and thought-provoking. Like this little book.

stop the world…I cooked

And by that, I mean I cooked real food. As in, a real menu.

As in: Beef Wellington.

Yes, I know it’s amazing. Believe me, no one is as amazed as me. Well, maybe John, who was rather pleased, and that, my friends, was the whole point.

After almost two weeks of phoning it in as a less than mediocre homemaker, I pulled out the pearls and <gasp> Martha Stewart (I will deny this tomorrow), and proceeded to have a rather lovely afternoon in the kitchen being creative in all kinds of new ways.

I could do this again.

In a very long time. That bottle of  Clos du Bois from earlier this week was for me.

wanna be my student for a sec?

Look, I’m knee deep in the end of the quarter. That means annoying but necessary meetings and too much grading. It also means a little burnout. Couple that with some other things that I prefer to give my attention to, and the recipe is one highly distracted professor. I don’t want to profess anything. I just want to be left alone to play.

I intentionally time my end of term ennui with the poetry unit for several reasons. One, I don’t want to work too hard. Two, I want to play with what I love: poetry. Three, my students have decided to trust me and stay (or they don’t trust me, and have bailed). When those three things happen at the same time, we do poetry. My way. No recitations. No rhyme schemes and counting syllables (well, there’s always a joker that writes off-color limericks). Instead, I have students select any 5 poems from the hundreds in the book, and share them with the class. All they have to do is find something to accompany the presentation of the poems. I encourage them to be creative and think outside the box. I’ve gotten amazing things…musicians who write music for the words — artists who paint pictures — rappers who perform the poems. It is a very interesting leap of faith that can only happen at the end of the course.

I am ALWAYS pleasantly surprised. Yesterday, a delightful woman, maybe a few years older than me, presented a beautiful tribute to her children. She found poems that captured their personalities and she wove a story about them throughout the presentation of her selections. Finally, she ended with this video, which is a mother reading the things her son said as a child. It is called a “found poem.” They are fun to construct. The idea is that you look for words and phrases as they exist when you find them, and you put them together in a meaningful way. I am startled at the depth of the conclusion in this found poem constructed by Naomi Shihab Nye from her son’s statements. Enjoy it.

It reminds me of Sarah Reinhard’s tweets.

the fridger-frater

Here’s stuff on my fridge. I still have artwork from my grown kiddoes, and a smattering of treats from the nieces and nephews. And a couple of really up-lifting (!) magnets from dear friends who evidently know me too well.