What do you get when you search for MARIA CELESTE NUDE on AOL? Why, Raspberry World, of course! And it's the only site listed, too.

...sheesh...

Marty and I just finished watching The Empire Strikes Back. Sunday night we watched Star Wars. I sometimes forget how much I love these movies. It's great to come back to them and still enjoy them so much. All I can say is, Han Solo is the baddest badass that there ever was.

I came home tonight and dug out my Hedge Hog hedge trimmer. I trimmed the 4 big bushes around the front door and then the monster bush that grows near the mailbox. My upper body strength is abysmal, and after just five bushes I felt like my hands were going to shake off. Now my wrists are like wet string... I can hardly type. What a wimp!

You must bring us... a SHRUBBERY!!!

I finally had a disturbing search request. How do you get to Raspberry World by looking up SATANIC ORGY? Oh, right, you use the AOL search engine, which seems to bring up Raspberry World on almost any search you do...

It really is summer... the blueberries are wonderful right now. Last night I made this blueberry cobbler, which is one of my favorite summertime recipes. Yum.

Beware! Breakfast is getting more and more dangerous by the day!

Does anyone else think that it's obvious? You shouldn't put a Pop Tart in the toaster and then leave the house for 20 minutes... It's not a pot roast, for goodness' sake.

Around 5:30 this morning, halfway between sleeping and waking, I had one of those strange dreams where your subconscious takes stuff that's happening NOW in your life and smushes it all together in a very strange way. In this dream I was trying to dye my hair while waiting for an important phone call. Of course, when I got halfway through with the dye job the phone rang. It was such an important call that I couldn't say, "Can I call you back?" and so I ended up sitting there for a very long time with dye in my hair and dripping into my face, worrying about what it was all going to look like when I finally got off the phone and managed to rinse it out.

Today I am wearing my favorite dress, which I have not worn since late April because (get this) it needed to be ironed.

The worst part? It only took me 5 minutes to iron it.

I've just added 5 pictures to the bathroom renovation gallery. Check out Marty's hard work!

Red House Gallery

Marty and I are trying to figure out what we want to do with the outside of our house. It clearly needs to be painted (we'll keep it red, of course), and we'd like to get a new front door (not another brown one) and possibly add some trim in a contrasting color. We probably won't get to this until next year at the earliest, with all the other projects going on. So we have some time to figure out what we want.

With that in mind, yesterday we went out on a Red House Safari, looking for red houses of a similar style and/or age to ours, to see what people are doing to them. Many of the red houses around these parts have white trim, but that's a look I'm not very fond of. Too barn-like, somehow. But there are other options. Yesterday we found two that we liked to varying degrees.

Red House Number 1 (left) has a very dark green front door, with narrow windows on both sides of the door. This is my favorite configuration for the door. I would very much like to get some of those windows next to our door to lighten up the front hall. When we first drove by this house, we thought the door was black. We have seen a few red and black houses, and they do look very sharp, but I'm just not sure if black is right for our door. (This is when Marty always sings, "I see a red door and I want to paint it black...")

House No. 1 is a very similar style to ours, classic colonial, although I have no idea when it was built. Our house (built in 1765) has larger windows than this one, which I'm very glad about. But I like how this house isn't hiding behind all those huge bushes like ours is. (And I'm certain that neither those bushes nor the larger windows are original to our house.)

Red House Number 2 (right) has a lot going on. Its trim is a kind of forest green ("too Christmassy" says Marty). I do like the piece above the front door (somewhat obscured by the flag above those white benches). I don't know what you call that thing, but I like it. The shutters are nice but our house doesn't really have room for them between the front windows. Check out those tiny little windows on the second floor!

So we are still looking around for inspiration. If you have any red houses you'd like to share, please send 'em here.

Wow. I was just hopping through my favorite journals, the way I do every morning, when I happened on this entry over in Marel Trout's journal. These are some of the nicest things anyone has ever said about Raspberry World! In public, even! Thanks, Marel.

As you no doubt realize if you're a regular reader of Raspberry World, Marel Trout keeps one of my favorite journal sites. And at Marel's place, you really get your money's worth (although, of course, it's free to get in). She has four journals on that site. The Chickenloaf Papers is her personal journal from July 1998 to April 2001, and The Compost Heap is her garden journal from around the same period. Earlier this year, she consolidated those two journals into one: The Ceaseless Torture of Adulthood! And finally, one of Marel's cats keeps a journal as well: Gracie's World.

Marel and I have some things in common, especially the tendency to become obsessed with a particular musical genre and do a full excavation of its roots, influences, and descendants. (For proof, look for her journal entries on ska.) We both have more than a passing interest in unusual fingernail polish and compilation tapes. And she takes some of the best cat pictures you'll find online. Ziggy is one of her favorite models, although she likes to call him Pia.

She has also captured rare photographic footage of Beeby Fzark.

It's not too late to become a sponsor for the 24-hour Blogathon coming up this weekend. Check it out!

This is going to be an interesting event, and the participant list includes many great bloggers with worthy causes to sponsor. My money's going to the Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation, via Rabi.

Now I woke up in the middle of a dream
Scared the world was too much for me
Sejarez said, "don't let go
Just plant the seeds and watch them grow"
I've slept in rainy canyon lands
Cold drenched to my skin
I always wake to find a face
To calm these troubled lands

~ Amy Ray, World Falls

This is so very, very true:

Not being young creates an ache in the soul, because the great secret of aging is that the world thinks you're older, but you feel the same.


Inside His Balding Head, the Freak Flag Still Flies, by Melvin Jules Bukiet.

(Thanks to Lynda B for the link.)

My vote for best weblog entry of the week: Gradualism vs. Punctuated Equilibrium: Two Decades in Words, Evolving by Rabi. What an incredible entry!

I do envy Rabi one thing. How wonderful simply to have access to all that early writing. I remember writing, but I don't know what happened to it all. I'm doubly impressed that Rabi has moved about as much as I had at her age, and still has managed to keep track of so much. I can track myself back to about 7th grade. Before that, it's very sporadic.

Go and read it. You'll love it too.

Oh my god! It is so HOT!

I just got in from a meeting of the [former] Manchester Slashers. We made a pilgrimage to Waterbury [Bootleg Capital of Connecticut] for CDs. And it was an especially triumphal trip! Laura found a hilarious CD featuring The Band and Tiny Tim (from the Basement Tapes era). You haven't lived til you've heard The Band singing backup for Tiny Tim on "Be My Baby." And I got the Bob Dylan Biograph set (which I've been meaning to get for awhile), Amy Ray's solo album (Stag), and... er... something else. Something that's a present for a relative. So I shouldn't say what it is, or who it's for, since most of my family reads this page now...

We really conquered Waterbury today, compared to what usually happens to us there. (We usually get dreadfully lost.) We went to Brass City Records first, because it's easy as pie to get to, and then we actually managed to find our way from there to Phoenix Records. This is quite an accomplishment. (You may remember that we gave up on Phoenix last January and just went to dinner after Brass City.) But it wasn't easy -- we still had to make a U-turn in the middle of Main Street, and make an illegal right-hand turn to get on the right street. In the end, Laura and I couldn't decide whether we managed it this time because (a) it was light outside (unlike January), (b) it wasn't raining (unlike January), or (c) there was lots of swearing (actually, that wasn't too different in January).

I really don't feel too bad about that. I'm sure I'm not the first person who has cried out in anguish on the streets of Waterbury, Connecticut, "I hate this fucking town!"

On top of all that great music I found in Waterbury, Laura gave me a CD she made of later Beach Boys stuff, and I've almost finished the third CD in my world music series, so there is a whole lot of music goin' on right now. (Laura also gave me her old copy of Two-Lane Blacktop -- the black sheep of all buddy movies -- starring Dennis Wilson, James Taylor, and the car from American Graffiti. I am so tickled to own this! Laura has graduated to the DVD.)

Now, on to the heat... It is SO hot here. At 6:30 tonight the heat index was 101° F, and the temperature was 92.1° F. Yow. When I got home tonight, the air conditioner had tripped the circuit breaker, and the temperature was reading 91° F on the upstairs thermostat. Oh, joy. (It's cooling down some now that I've connected the circuit again...)

I'm just grateful my car's running so well. It was in the shop last week, and it doesn't seem to be having that problem anymore... the one where it gets real hot and cuts off and won't start again, I mean. So I'm very happy. After all, it means we didn't get stuck in Waterbury this afternoon.

I just posted the pictures from our weekend trip to Vermont and Massachusetts.

I also added a couple of pictures to the bathroom renovation gallery, although they're from over a week ago. Not too much has happened in that room since Tom-Paul left. We've been pretty busy for the last week or so.

Anyway, enjoy them!

Check out the latest San-X character: Afro Ken.

I was picturing something along the lines of Dream Date Ken, or Magic Earring Ken... only with an afro...

Today I'm feeling all nostalgic for web sites that have long since disappeared. It's kinda funny that the web is old enough now that I can look back and reminisce...

I miss these guys.

• Scott's Page of Evil was one of my favorite sites back in 1996 or so. Scott explained the true evil nature of many things we take for granted in everyday life: religion, the French, cameras, the Spin Doctors (that rock band), and, of course, Andie MacDowell, Satan's Actress. He wasn't afraid to tackle the really tough questions, like "French Canadians: Evil or Not?" Scott, the web hasn't been the same without you...


• Grumpy with the Feds was another big favorite back in 96-97. It was run by a student at the University of Chicago who became one of my first internet pals. The page was a stripped-down site purely dedicated to the finest content. Even though it's been gone for years, this site lives on in the memory of its fans (and those grrls who were lucky enough to receive a copy of the infamous "Best of Davis" video).

Luckily, some of my favorites are still around, although at new locations. The Completely Unauthorized Hugh Grant Page is still kicking. As is The J. Crew Annoying Model of the Week.

Desktop Update

My computer desktop at work is the following picture, which I took last weekend:



If you'd like to use it for your desktop wallpaper too, there's a bigger one here.

To set your computer desktop wallpaper, do the following: right-click (click with the right-hand mouse button) on the large picture and then choose "Set as Wallpaper." Voila!

I took this picture on Saturday at a stream near Readsboro, Vermont, where we were visiting for the weekend. It was a gorgeous day, sunny and hot, and the water was cold and fast-flowing. I brought home a large rock from the riverbed to keep on my hearth, beside the fireplace.

Monday morning. Yes, the start of the week. Let's be grateful this only comes around once every seven days.

I actually got to bed at a decent time last night, and slept the night through. That's an improvement. However, I woke up this morning with a splitting headache, so I'm not sure the night was a complete success.

Right. To get the week off to a giggly start, here's an excerpt from Bridget Jones's interview with Colin Firth, which appears in the book Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding. (As you may already know, Bridget is obsessed with Colin Firth's portrayal of Mr. Darcy, and somehow gets the opportunity to interview him for a newspaper. She's a little distracted throughout the whole thing. But who wouldn't be?)

BJ Oh. Do you think Mr Darcy would have slept with Elizabeth Bennet before the wedding?
CF Yes, I do think he might have.
BJ Do you?
CF Yes. I think it's entirely possible. Yes.
BJ (BREATHLESSLY) Really?
CF I think it's possible, yes.
BJ How would it be possible?
CF Don't know if Jane Austen would agree with me on this, but...
BJ We can't know because she's dead.
CF NO, we can't... but I think Andrew Davies's Mr Darcy would have done.
BJ Why do you think that, though? Why? Why?
CF Because I think it was very important to Andrew Davies that Mr Darcy had the most enormous sex drive.
BJ (GASPS) And, um... I think that came across, really, really well with the acting. I really think it did.
CF Thank you. At one point, Andrew even wrote as a stage direction: "Imagine that Darcy has an erection".
(V LARGE CRASHING NOISE)
BJ Which bit was that?
CF It's when she's been walking across the country and bumps into him in the grounds in the early stages.
BJ The bit where she's all muddy?
CF ... and dishevelled
BJ ... and sweaty?
CF Exactly.
BJ Was that a difficult bit to act?
CF You mean the erection?
BJ (AWED WHISPER) Yes.
CF UM, well, Andrew also wrote that I don't propose that we should focus on it, and, therefore, no acting required in that department at least.
BJ Mmmmm. (LONG PAUSE)
CF Yes. (MORE PAUSE)
BJ Mmm.
CF Is that it, then?
BJ No. What was it like with your friends when you started being Mr Darcy?
CF There were a lot of jokes about it: growling, "Mr Darcy" over breakfast and so on. There was a brief period when they had to work quite hard to hide their knowledge of who I really was and...
BJ Hide it from who?
CF Well, from anyone who suspected that perhaps I was like Mr Darcy.
BJ But do you think you're not like Mr Darcy?
CF I do think I'm not like Mr Darcy, yes.
BJ I think you're exactly like Mr Darcy.
CF In what way?
BJ You talk the same way as him.
CF Oh do I?
BJ You look exactly like him, and I, oh, oh...
PROTRACTED CRASHING NOISES FOLLOWED BY SOUNDS OF STRUGGLE

Another weekend flies by!

Marty and I have just come back from a weekend in Vermont. We stayed with a friend in her mom's cabin in the Green Mountains. Now it really feels like summertime to me!

We spent some time in Bennington, Vermont, looking at antiques and handmade pottery. We went wading in a stream out in the sunshine. We ate ice cream cones and played Scrabble. We walked through the forest looking for salamanders. We heard the bullfrogs singing at dusk, and at night the sky was so dark that we could see the milky way. And I read for hours in the early morning before anyone else woke up. (Light, summertime reading: I have finished both the Bridget Jones books now.)

Today on the way home we stopped in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. Marty and I had driven by this little town last fall on our Mohawk Trail drive. We didn't realize last fall that this town has two tourist attractions: the Bridge of Flowers and the Glacial Potholes. Verrrry interesting.

It was a great weekend. I'll post some pictures soon.

This turned out to be a busy week! Sort of unexpectedly, actually. Things at work really picked up, and Marty and I both had social things going on in the evenings for the last couple of days (separate things, even, not together). So the house is starting to look kind of a wreck...

But instead of staying home and cleaning, we are just about to head out the door to Vermont for the weekend. The laundry can probably wait. Anyway, I'll catch you on the other side. Have a lovely weekend!

This has gotta be a first.

Is there anyone who doesn't know about slash yet? It's been featured in articles all over the web and mainstream media in the past few years, and there are about a zillion websites out there dedicated to it.

But never did I expect to see an article about slash in The Times of London. And never did I expect to see an article in The Times slashing Tony Blair.

Never.

One of the funniest parts of the movie Bridget Jones's Diary (which I attended last night for the second time) is the fight between the characters played by Colin Firth and Hugh Grant. It's a classic British schoolboy fight -- complete with kicking, hair-pulling, and name-calling -- with comic value added by the fact that the two participants are in their thirties. They're even followed out into the street and egged on by a gang of onlookers (Bridget's pals, along with a bunch of Greek waiters from the restaurant across the street).

Grant Has 'Girly' Fight in Bridget Jones's Diary

There's nothing macho about the fight between Hugh Grant and Colin Firth in Bridget Jones's Diary. Grant insisted on filming the scene that way. "I've been trying to do that for years," he told reporters. "To fight like two middle-class educated Englishmen would fight, which I've always maintained would be girly, cowardly -- with squealing." (AP, 4/15/01)

WOE IS ME!

Last night I found out here that Colin Firth's Hamlet has been "postponed" (although it reads more like "cancelled") due to his busy filming schedule. I am very disappointed! I guess he's becoming too popular for small productions like that... well, that's a nice thing for his career, but very disappointing for women like Mary and me.

Although Mary told me to look on the bright side... if we'd gone to London, I would have been all jealous of her and Colin.

I think I'll keep my eyes open and see if I can find some other event. I've got the idea of a trip in my head now, and I don't think I can get it out.

From my e-mail inbox:

Hi Susie,

Don't ask why I need to know this, but does the rooster have to "do" the
chicken in order for it to lay eggs? On the farm, does the rooster "do"
every chicken, every day?

Strangely enough, I knew the answer to this question. But I still don't know why my friend needed this info...

It's a beautiful starry night here in Connecticut. Today was hot, but it cooled off this evening and we've had the doors open since before dinner. It feels great.

I added a couple of pictures to the renovation gallery.

I saw this disturbing ad for Diet Coke (currently being discussed in Slate) myself, and I had the very same response as the writer of the review. What, exactly, is so reassuring about your mother's old underwear? The mind boggles.

TV Now is not much to look at, design-wise, but it's a good site for looking up TV listings for your favorite actors.

Colin Firth, for example. Here, you can find a listing of his TV appearances for this month. If you wanted to, I mean.*

And here are the listings for Ciaran Hinds, also known as "that guy in the big hat, from Persuasion." My friend Mary brought this guy up last night when we were on the phone. I'd forgotten all about him. But he's very interesting to watch. Especially in Persuasion and Jane Eyre.

* For those of you following along with the home edition of the Colin Firth game, I now give you my latest moves:

• I added several FirthFilms to my Half.com "items I'm watching" list.


• I ordered the books Bridget Jones's Diary and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason for very good prices, also on Half.com.


• This morning before work, I called Riverside Studios in London to inquire about Hamlet tickets for next year. Unfortunately, sales of these tickets are currently suspended. Apparently the response was quite overwhelming, and Riverside decided to hold some back to sell closer to the performance date. Otherwise all the shows would have been sold out by now. So I am going to call back when the rest of the tickets go on sale. (However. The fellow I spoke to on the phone this morning also mentioned vaguely that they were trying to get some details "sorted out" before selling the rest of the tickets... which I can only hope means, they are trying to lengthen the run of the play. Surely, surely it will end up running for more than 5 weeks.)

But yes, if I can get tickets, Marty and I are planning a trip to London for next winter. And I am very happy about that.

Are you looking for Raspberry Recipes? If so, go here.

This morning started off stormy and gray outside. I ran through the rain to my car, and then drove to work through thunder and lightning. Donner and Blitzen.

There were new pictures of the renovations yesterday, but I didn't get a chance to download them or add them to the gallery. I'll try to get to it tonight. But no promises.

Okay, first of all, I'd like to know who was using my search engine to look for "manipulative frogs" earlier today. 'Fess up!

Actually, searches like that make me giggle. And besides, those frogs are manipulative. And controlling.

Progress is being made on the bathroom project. I added a few pictures to the gallery. You have to understand that while I'm at work during the day, not as many pictures are going to get taken. But lots of progress was made.

I am whipped. Off to bed.

Greetings from construction central. The bathroom renovation project is underway, and pictures are going up as progress is made. Check out the gallery. (I will continue to update this, so check back.)

The pictures really can't capture all the work that has gone on so far. Besides the obvious jobs like removing the old fixtures, there has been much soldering and do-it-yourself plumbing work to replace old valves and stop leaks. Much of last night and this morning was spent on those types of behind-the-scenes activites.

However, as I type, Marty and Tom-Paul are beginning the task of removing the old toilet from the bathroom. To me, this seems like the nastiest possible part of the entire job. However, it's all in your perspective. I think this is the moment Tom-Paul's been anticipating ever since he arrived!

More updates as they happen.

I would just like to point out that we roll our own black cat on a regular basis around these parts. Except we call it cat tipping.

I'm sure you've heard of cow tipping, that nocturnal pastime of frat boys and others with too much time on their hands and lots of cow pastures around. Did you know you can do it to a cat, too? Except, unlike cow-tipping, it's not cruel or damaging. (Cow tipping really is bad.)

Ziggy often sits in the meatloaf position, but instead of resting down on his haunches and belly, he stands up on his little tiptoes. So he's hunched down low, but still standing on all four feet. When he is in that position I push against his side and he rolls over neatly and stretches out to be rubbed. Roll your own black cat.

Happy Friday!

Top Story Today: My hydrangea is blooming! And it's blooming in blue! I have always wanted a blue hydrangea like the ones my mom has back home, but every one I've ever had up north has been white. I know it's something about the alkaline level of the soil -- you can make the flowers turn blue if you adjust the soil somehow. But that seems too much like science to me. And also, I'm not really much of a gardener. I'm doing good just to get the bush into the ground. Forget about mucking about with the chemistry of the soil.

I planted this one in the back yard last summer, and the flowers were white when I bought it. So imagine my delight this year when the new flowers started to form, and they were blue! I guess we must have the right kind of dirt, and I am very pleased about that.

Holiday Recap: We had a low-key independence day, just staying around the house. We grilled hamburgers and hot dogs and listened to the faraway booms of fireworks in New Haven as we watched the special 2-hour Junkyard Wars Trans-Atlantic Challenge. My favorite team of all time won -- the Long Brothers, a team of farm boys who grew up "outside Tyrone, Pennsylvania." As former residents of Central Pennsylvania who are intimately acquainted with the metropolis that is Tyrone, Marty and I nearly fell on the floor laughing the first time we heard the Long Brothers introduced. Outside Tyrone?

(And yes, in the absence of new Buffy episodes, Junkyard Wars is the only TV show I currently watch.)

Tuesday night was the James Taylor concert up at Tanglewood (Lenox, Massachusetts). We sat out on the lawn with our friends and our picnic (and several thousand other people and their picnics). It was a nice night. A lot cooler weather than the last time I saw JT up there in 1999, but not nearly as cool as when we went for the Boston Symphony last summer! We needed a campfire that night!

JT was great, playing two long sets and interacting with the audience like always. He is such a favorite of mine.

House Update: Marty has stripped the wallpaper from the whole downstairs and upstairs hall (see a picture). It was a monumental task, which he accomplished only with a steamer and a putty knife (another picture). Soon we will be able to start hanging the new wallpaper, and then we can be almost as cool as Katynka!

(The really very sad thing about the wallpaper project is, Marty and I keep walking through the hall and saying how much better it already looks. That's saying quite a lot, considering that the walls are currently ugly, dingy, scratched-up brown wallboard. But those of you who experienced our original wallpaper will understand what we mean, and recognize the truth in what we say.)

But before we hang the wallpaper, Marty's taking a break to work on the downstairs bathroom. You may remember the thing about the bathroom from a year ago. Well, it's basically been out of commission since I wrote that entry last July. But Marty is going to get down to business next week -- he's taking a week off work to dedicate himself to it full time. He won't be alone, though -- my younger brother is coming to visit from Georgia, and he's going to help. (I am looking forward to helping with the tiling and such, but moving bathtubs, sinks, and toilets out and breaking down walls really seems like a job better suited to manly men like my husband and brother.)

Music News: I have been working on mixes. (If you read my music page you probably already know this part.) I've made some World Music Mixes inspired by Marel Trout, the Queen of Mixing. I'm also doing a mix trade with Hal, one of my best friends from high school. And I'm on a mission of mercy to provide Renee with some new music. And just so I don't get bored, I have a special mix brewing for a girl who has fallen in love this summer.

Another Web Announcement: I know I made a couple of web announcements last weekend, but I have one more.

• Welcome! There's someone new joining the web. Actually, two someones. I hope I don't get in trouble for posting this early, because the page isn't quite finished. But I'm not the first person to link to Odin's Kingdom. Give them some time to get settled and I guarantee that Katynka and Odin will have an absolutely smashing site.

Other Stuff: I've been making some travel plans (and dreaming about making more); trying to catch up on my correspondence (in which I am woefully behind); and spending less time stressing about things I can't control. I've also experienced a powerful sense of deja vu as I typed this entry. And now my lunch hour is done, so I am finished.

P.S. I think I'm back.

My prom was never this much fun...

The journal is updated.