I Was There

Where? At *NSYNC's final concert of the Celebrity tour last night, in Orlando, Florida. Here's what the Orlando Sentinel had to say comparing these boys to their cross-town rivals:

'N Sync's dancing is more endearing than the moves of its boy-band rival [Backstreet], which may account for the band's longevity.

Man, it was an amazing show. I didn't think it could be much better than when we saw it in New Jersey, but it was. It really was.

And in my mind, last night's performance will always be remembered as "The Lance Show."

Okay.

I am packed. Exhausted. And bouncing with excitement!

See you in Orlando! Or when I get back.

Rambling

Yeah, I see all you people who have hit my page since midnight. What makes you think I'm still awake?

Oh, I guess you're right...

Packing tonight. Finally finished the laundry about 45 minutes ago and now the suitcase is just about ready. I know I'm taking way too much stuff for just a couple of days. But it's always so weird when you go from up here (Connecticut) to down there (Florida) at this time of year. It's 55 degrees here and 88 degrees there. That's two whole different wardrobes. And so even though I know it's warm there, I just can't seem to stop myself from packing too much stuff. Because what if I need that sweater or those jeans? (Yeah, right.)

It doesn't matter, though. Not really. Whatever I take will be fine. Whatever I forget, I can replace. Laura has the concert tickets, so I don't have to worry about those. So I'm all set.

I love chunky shoes, which is nice because they are in style these days, but they take up way too much room in your suitcase. It means you can only take one extra pair instead of two, you know?

Growling

Okay, I am having a very weird problem with my CD burner. I've been in high production mode this week, making multiple copies of the new mix to take to Florida tomorrow. Well, it's a good thing I decided to test them before I went...

On maybe 4 different copies of this disc, everything is perfect except one song is dropped off the playlist. Well, it's not actually dropped. It's there, but it's just an empty track. Like, it looks like it's playing, but nothing's coming out of the speakers.

The even stranger thing is that it doesn't always happen on the same track. Sometimes it's track three, sometimes track five, sometimes track 17. How weird is that? Sure, I've had situations before where a track got corrupted and I had to start over, and once I even had every track on a playlist get corrupted after I'd made many, many copies of one of those World in My Head mixes. But this just seems so random.

[Edited: I just found the same problem on a different CD I burned this week, too. So it's not just this particular playlist.]

So I shut everything down and restarted. And I'm trying to remember not to do anything else on the computer while I'm burning (with this big hard drive it's not like before, when I couldn't do anything else). Luckily, several of the copies I made of this worked just fine. I think I have enough, or maybe I just need one more.

Anything else I should try?

So, who ordered the Oreo-Os?

I lifted this link straight from Lucy because she is cool: The Smoking Gun: Backstage Pass. This site has backstage riders from the contracts of many touring artists and groups. You know I went right for *NSYNC.

The boys have ten pages of demands (well, there are five of them after all) including the specs for the Quiet Dressing Room and the Toys Dressing Room (from the No Strings Attached tour, if you were wondering). Here's the catering list for the quiet room:

36 bottles Aqua Fina water (16 oz)
1 iron and ironing board
2 rolling clothes racks
1 fruit tray
1 vegetable tray
1 deli tray
1 large bowl assorted candy bars
Fresh pot of tea with lemon and honey
2 cases assorted soda (with plenty of ice)
2 cases assorted Gatorade
1 case of Barq's Red Creme soda
One dozen large clean bath towels
One iron and ironing board [again]
One gallon apple juice
One gallon orange juice
One gallon grape juice
One gallon cranberry juice
Two boxes of Pop Tarts. One box of Chocolate Pop Tarts
One box of Captain Crunch and one box of Oreo Cookie Cereal

But no milk to wash all that cereal down with?

Check out the rest of the artists (no, they're not all boybands...)

And -- oh my god -- I just noticed Elton John is in the "divas" category! BWAH!

Fun with Yoga

Well. Just got in from yoga. It is lots of fun so far. Tonight we did some new poses, none of which I can currently remember the name of. Maybe I'll go to Yoga Journal later and see if I can find pictures. [Edited: one of them was the bridge pose.]

Also, I didn't break any fixtures this time at the studio. So that was a MAJOR improvement over last time.

This is a very busy week. I realized yesterday that I had something to do every night after work -- today yoga, tomorrow an appointment, Weds yoga, Thurs haircut, Fri fly to Orlando. So I cancelled my appointment for tomorrow night. Otherwise, when am I ever going to get to see my husband?

Here's something that made me giggle: someone came to RW today looking for sexiest kitchen tiles. Not only that, but my page was the first hit on Google! (And I don't even have any kitchen tiles...)

Happy Sunday

I remember when I was in grad school, I noticed how people who worked for a living (in business, I mean, not academia) lived for the weekend. I thought to myself, how sad. How awful that you feel like your real life starts when you leave your job, yet you spend 40 hours a week (or more) doing your job.

Anyway, I've noticed in the last year or so that I've become one of those people. It wasn't always like this.

So it's the weekend, and I'm glad. I had a productive day yesterday, doing some laundry and straightening out my study some. I never really finished getting the room all organized when I moved in here (is anyone surprised?) so there's an odd kind of mess -- very current stuff piled on top of stuff that should have been put away a couple of months ago. I always think of archaeologists digging through layers of relics from different eras when I have to clean up something like this. You dig down beneath the receipts from the last couple of weeks and find letters from months ago, directions to places you went back in the fall, playlists for CDs you were making last spring but never got around to finishing.

Marty's weekend starts and ends today, now that he's working Saturdays as well as Monday through Friday. He seems to be keeping a good attitude about it, but I don't think this schedule is good for the long term. People need time off to unwind and relax and feel like they have a life of their own away from work.

Yesterday I also made a new mix CD. It's kind of a sequel to an old one (Dirty Pop) and I like how it turned out. It's April and this is just my second mix of the year. Looking back at my CD record (a Word file I keep with details of all my mixes, when I made them and who I gave them to) I see that on April 21, 2000, I was just completing my 13th mix of the year so far (I ended up with 20 that year).

The year before was even more productive (or less productive, if you look at the time I consequently spent on other stuff); I got my first burner in August, and during the four months from September to December I did 23 mixes. But a lot of those were conversions of my old mix tapes to CD, so they shouldn't be considered completely new mixes. Still, 23 is a lot. More than one a week. And a lot of them were new.

Don't ever doubt that I have an obsessive personality. If you didn't believe it already.

So. Today is finish up the laundry day, plan the menu day, work on the study some more day. The weather here lately has been insane, totally insane, so I have really no idea what it's going to be like outside today. For the past several days, it's been at least ten degrees different from the day before -- either up or down -- so we're wearing everything in our closets right now (hence all the laundry, I guess). If it turns into a pretty day, maybe we'll go outside and do something fun.

But for now, I need to burn some more copies of this mix, get the laundry going, and find some breakfast.

Thank God It's Friday Night...

and I just just just just just got paid...

What a week. But it's over now. Yep, all done.

Smiles, everyone! Smiles!

Why I like having my own computer (rather than sharing one with my husband)



That's not the only reason, of course, and thankfully, most of them are not quite as silly as that.

Why does life suddenly pick up like a whirlwind sometimes? I am having an extremely busy week. I do intend to come back and write about the *NSYNC show and other things as well, but at the moment I can hardly find a minute to even check my site, much less update it.

Anyway, just wanted to say hi. I'll be back soon (I hope).

Susie

The *NSYNC Show

Yes, it was awesome, it was fun and silly and just a great great adventure. When I picked Laura up at the airport Friday night, the *NSYNC vibe was already in the air. She walked into the baggage claim area and I met her with the classic call and response, "When I say N, you say SYNC!" It just got better from there.

Marty was out with friends from work Friday night, so Laura and I went to dinner by ourselves and then stopped by Best Buy on the way home. I picked up the Madison Square Garden show on DVD and the new On the Line DVD. Driving home, we played No Strings Attached and part of Dirty Pop, then we got here and watched the MSG concert. It took us twice as long as normal to watch the show because we were laughing the entire time and had to keep backing up to see things again and catch what we'd missed.

I should explain about Laura and me. We've been friends since high school (17 years) and we've shared many obsessions over the years. Our first one, way back when, was the Monkees (and they were already retro even then). Still, *NSYNC has hit us harder than most.

Here's how it happened. Laura came to visit in early December, just a few weeks after my fall into complete, abject *NSYNC obsession. And so began the *Ndoctrination. I started her off with a viewing of the Atlantis Concert, the 24/7 On the Line special, and followed it up with repeated exposure to Dirty Pop. I think she was lost in the first few minutes of Atlantis, as soon as she saw the dance for "I Want You Back." "Tearin' Up My Heart" just sealed the deal. By the time we got to "Bye Bye Bye" (and the infamous Lance grab), she was a goner. The *Nfection took. By the end of her visit she had bought the Christmas album and was a die-hard Lance Bass lover.

So that was four months ago. When we met back up this weekend, we both knew all the words to all the songs and were primed for the concert. We were ready for fun! Saturday, we got up and decorated the car (see picture below). Yes, that's Chris, JC, Lance, and Joey on the back window of the Forrester. I have Nikki to thank for those stickers -- thank you, Nikki! We didn't need (or want) la Timberlake, and there wasn't room for him anyway...

Driving down to New Jersey, we seemed to attract a lot of attention on the road. I made sure to drive the speed limit; I absolutely did not want to get stopped with those pictures in my back window!

When we reached the Garden State, we stopped at the Asian Mall in Edgewater for a couple of hours, and found some great deals on china and stationery. I love that place. Then we headed for the Meadowlands! After an early dinner, we parked at the venue and waited in a long line for the security check. Finally, we were in!

We were both very happy with the seats. Well, okay, we weren't in the pit, or even on the floor, but we could see great and we were facing the stage head-on. And we got them for face value so they were not outrageously expensive. We were very pleased, on the whole.

There were three opening acts. Three! The best of them was Smashmouth -- and they were great. They played a full set, and at the end, Joey Fatone came onstage to sing "All Star" with them. Our first glimpse of an *NSYNC boy! Whee! The entire arena went crazy!

But not as crazy as thirty minutes later, when *NSYNC took the stage.

To be continued...

Yeah



*NSYNC... Giddy Up... Like Dis...

1. find binoculars
2. recharge phone
3. find camera batteries and recharge
4. print directions

Scatterings

My mind feels very scattered tonight. I keep thinking of more and more things I need to do, and when I try to sit down and write, I keep interrupting myself with questions and tangents.

Where are my rechargable camera batteries? I know I brought them home from England, but I can't seem to locate them now to put them in the charger.

Laura G is flying up tomorrow from Valdosta for the weekend, and we are going to see *NSYNC in New Jersey on Saturday. So tonight I have been getting the guest room ready and trying unsuccessfully to find another pillow.

How come there are three pillows on that bed instead of four?

Lately I have been pretty up and down emotionally -- more so than usual, I think. Life has felt very trying in the last two weeks. But at the same time, it has also been very good. True, some things have happened that made me feel like an afterthought. Some tough-to-handle surprises have surfaced. But then other things -- things as small as funny e-mails from friends, or as silly as Marty's complaints about store-brand yogurt -- have made me laugh so hard and smile so much that I've forgotten to feel bad about the hard stuff. The thought of Jim's mini-skirt collection was good for at least an afternoon of giggles.

I have a new copy of The Mystery here on my desk. I am looking forward to a mix trade with Deb, but I have to listen to my copy of this mix and make sure it is clean before I send it off.

When I'm not feeling so self-absorbed, I've also been thinking about my friends who are going through tough times right now. People are dealing with very big stuff, and it is hard to know that there's not much I can do to make it better. Still, today on the phone I made someone laugh long and hard with a story about something stupid that happened to me, and I felt good about it because I know she needed the laugh. Hell, what's the point in breaking a toilet if you can't use the story to make your friends laugh after they get laid off?

Why is my wrist aching? Why?

Since we came back from England, Marty and I have both been focusing on our health and trying to make good decisions about what we eat. It requires a lot of planning on my part (since I do the cooking) and it has added a lot of complexity to my weekly shopping and cooking routines. I am sure it will become more intuitive as the weeks go by, and it will be less of a job to remember all the things I need to do every day. But I am proud of myself for starting on this healthy eating project, and even prouder for exercising, which is not easy for me. Amanda has been an inspiration to me where this is concerned. The positive changes she has made in her life have made a big impression on me since we've become closer friends in recent months.

I have a black cat here snuggled against my arm, patting me on the hand with his paw. Could there be anything sweeter than that?

The Wildlife at Work

Where I work, we have a wildlife habitat in the middle of the site. There are a couple of short nature trails around it, which I explored today at lunchtime. It is nice outside, very spring-like weather, with blue sky and wind that makes you glad you're wearing a jacket (even if it's a light one).

I'm making a big effort to put exercise into my schedule. I went to my second yoga class last night (enjoyed it very much) and have been keeping a journal of what I do every day, as well as what I eat and other things about my day-to-day existence. The problem is, I have never much cared for exercise, physical play, or any kind of participation sports. My hobbies and interests have always tended towards the "sit and think" side. Reading, music, arts and crafts, cooking -- there's not much opportunity for physical activity in any of those. Well, except for my four years in the high school marching band, I guess, but that was a time-limited gig.

So I am trying to find things that are interesting to do, activities that engage my mind as well as my body. I hope that yoga will do that. I also got this book recently: Short Nature Walks in Connecticut, and I am looking forward to trying out some of the walks as the weather gets nicer.

But it's still a challenge. Finding things to do that get me off my ass and moving, but that also hold my interest.

Green and White

Speaking of my new green and white bedspread...

My mother-in-law reminded me that there are dishes with that green and white pattern on them. I had also forgotten that my grandmother had green and white dishes when I was growing up, and so did my family.

The world seems very green and white right now. Spring is coming, the early flowers are out already (daffodils and hyacinths are blooming, and the crocuses are mostly already past). The forsythia are popping open this week, including the crazy wild-looking one in our yard. (The picture you see here is from last Thursday night in Manchester, where I took a walk just as the sun was going down. Forsythia, birches, and evergreens at dusk.)

Most of the trees around here are still bare, but the willows are yellow with the new leaves. You can see them blowing in the wind from far away now. They're always the first trees to return. Up close, you can that our lilac is budding like crazy.

The tulips and dogwood in the front yard are getting ready for their close-up, Mr. DeMille. I expect it'll happen sometime in the next couple of weeks.

Green has always been my favorite color.

London Feet (and other body parts)

My friend in England is going to see the exhibit Body Worlds today in London. It opened the day we left England last month, so we missed it (darn!). Not that I'm sure I would have wanted to go in the first place. It's an art exhibit featuring real dead human bodies and parts of bodies. Not surprisingly, it has inspired a lot of protests. (Also, according to that Guardian Article above, it has inspired a lot of people to quit smoking, thanks to the "Good Lung, Bad Lung" display.) Anyway, I am looking forward to hearing my friend's impressions.

Today I'm wearing the shoes I bought in London. They are very cool sort of brown leather closed-toe sandals. Maybe I'll take a picture sometime. And in my lunch I brought a bag of iced gems, so I am reliving the magic today! Heh. Better this than Body Worlds.

Dude!

I ran across Tophoria in my log files and went for a visit. It seems like Christopher is still in the process of putting his page together but I like how it looks so far. And his dry sense of humor makes me smile. I'll be watching this page.

Plus, another Eminem slash fan! Big plus! (Write me, Christopher. We'll talk. I have EmSlash info for you.)

This pattern reminds me of a book I had as a child, with green line drawings of country scenes. I think it is downstairs on the bookshelf with the rest of my childhood books.

When I saw this Waverly fabric recently I felt a strong sense of recognition. It seemed so familiar and comforting to me. I kept thinking about it and finally decided to order a new comforter set in this pattern. It arrived today and I am very happy with it. I know it's crazy to have a white bedspread in a house with a black cat, but I really love this pattern.

I made up the bed immediately so I could see how it looked. Now I want to paint the bedroom walls green. (If we do, it will be our third green room. Once the downstairs bathroom is finished, that is.)

My old comforter was also green. I had been sleeping under it since, oh, high school. That's only 16 years ago now. It was time for a change.

Well, off to bed.

Giggling

When I was explaining to Marty about Hatha Yoga last night, he listened for a few minutes and then he got this funny look on his face. Finally he said, "But Susie, you know Yoda never went to Hoth."

I didn't even tell him about how my instructor's ujayii breathing sounds a little like Darth Vader...

What is Red?

I woke up this morning with a very strong feeling that I should wear red today. So here I am in a red sweater, feeling very good. I don't know why, but something about the red is very appealing to me today. Then I ran across this page on color energy.

I wonder why all these colors have only positive attributes. What happens when you wear two colors that clash with each other, or if you only dress in black or white?

Namaste

I just returned from my first yoga class. I am so beat! It was a good workout. And also very calming.

For those who have asked, this is a beginner's yoga class with both hatha and raja yoga. We are learning the basic asanas and also doing meditation in each class. The class is generally scheduled for an hour and twenty minutes, but tonight it was closer to two hours. There were about 15 people there, both men and women, all ages, in a big studio with nice big windows. The sun went down while we were in class and the room got dimmer and dimmer until it was just down to candlelight.

I have to admit I was a little surprised that we did surya namaskara (salute to the sun) in our first beginner yoga class. And it goes much faster than I imagined! But maybe that's normal, to do it on the first day and to do it so fast. But I was flailing around like a fish on land. Well, a very big fish with arms and legs and floppy boobs.

I was the heaviest person in the class, I think. Before I went I kept having these irrational fears that the teacher would take me aside and tell me I was too fat to do yoga. But no, I just did it like everyone else did. Well, some of them may have done it more capably than I did, but I did it. I had heard that you focus on yourself in yoga rather than on what other people are doing, and it really seemed to be true tonight. At least for me. I was trying so hard to get the poses right that I didn't even notice what anyone else was up to.

The teacher gave us a whole sheet of homework exercises to do daily, and I have a yoga DVD that I borrowed from Amanda, so maybe I will practice before I go to my next class. Even so, I think it'll be awhile before I can get that sun salute up to full speed (or anything even approximating the proper poses).

Still, I liked it. I'm looking forward to going back.

Fun in the Big Easy

Have you been reading Mary T's updates from New Orleans over at Half Mad Spinster? Very, very enjoyable. Go and read. (Well, okay, at lunchtime.)

More Movie Notes

I'm always amazed at the previews and trailers the theatre decides to show at the movies I go to. For instance, when we saw A Beautiful Mind last month, there were at least a couple of previews for slapstick comedies. As if the viewers that choose A Beautiful Mind are also the ones most likely to go see Big Trouble ("rated PG-13 for language, crude humor and sex-related material"). Not that I'm suggesting a person wouldn't want to see both of those films, but I would imagine the two audiences are fairly different on average.

So, today at Monsoon Wedding, we saw three trailers. Mean Machine, a British movie about a famous football (ie, soccer) player who goes to prison and ends up coaching a prison team there. Undisputed, an American movie about a famous boxer who goes to prison and ends up fighting a championship fight there. And Unfaithful, a thriller about adultery starring Richard Gere and Diane Lane (brought to us by the director Adrian Lyne, who of course was responsible for Fatal Attraction and Indecent Proposal). Yeah, right.

Marty figured that the Monsoon Wedding audience was also the target audience for the two prison movies. Why not?

I promise you, Monsoon Wedding is much better than any of these movies sound. Go and see.

Date Night

Marty and I just came in from a date... not just a date, but a theme date. We went to see the movie Monsoon Wedding and followed up with dinner at Tandoor, our favorite Indian restaurant.

Maria had told me to see this movie, and she was right, it was really good. It was a nice blend of romance and family drama, and set in Delhi. I didn't realize before I went that the director, Mira Nair, was also the director of Salaam Bombay!, which I saw back in 1988 when it was first released. What a great film that was. Absolutely amazing.

For dinner tonight we had mughlai korma (chicken korma) and alu chole (chickpeas and potatoes), with naan and papadam. Yes, papadam! And Kingfishers, of course. I ordered the alu chole "medium hot" and it was still not very spicy. I think next time I'm going with HOT!

Appears to be working again now...

Don't make me angry, Blogger. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry...

Fuckin' Blogger

Is it just me? I can't get to www.blogger.com today. All I get is a message from IE saying, "We can't find www.blogger.com."

Anyone else having this problem?

If I go to pro.blogger.com, I can sign in, but I still can't access any of my weblogs to update or edit them. I can see them listed, but when I click on the links I just get error messages.

So, the only way I can post is to use the "Blog This" bookmarklet on my toolbar, and of course that means I can't get in to edit anything after I post it. Which is a problem for me, because I usually edit my posts many times.

If it's not a problem with Blogger, it's a problem with my Comcast internet service. Frankly I hope it's Blogger -- at least then the problem might be fixable. Comcast has been less than accommodating about fixing problems.

Please tell me if you are having any trouble with Blogger today (or not). Is it just Blogger Pro? Is it just me?

And now I will post this, knowing that if there are errors I will not be able to edit until who knows when. Argh.

Yum Yum

Oh my god. I got one of my funniest search requests ever today:

favorite recipes for teenage boys

Ha!

Some Books I Bought in England

Trainspotting by Murray Smith. No, not the novel by Irvine Welsh. This is a study of the cultural impact of the film adaptation of Trainspotting. Yep, I'm going back to my CultStuds days. I read part of it in London and it's very interesting. It makes me want to watch the movie again. (If you've been reading since last August, you probably know that I have a conflicted relationship with the film Trainspotting).

Bollywood by Ashok Banker. This is a handy little guide to the Bollywood film genre. The book covers Bollywood themes, music, cultural impact, and talks about specific movies as well. It's part of a very cool series, Pocket Essentials Film. I could have bought almost all of the books in this series, they were so cool.

Film Music by Paul Tonks. Another handy little guide from the Pocket Essentials series. I especially like the reference section on how to start a CD library of film scores. Not that I need any help with that, but still, it's cool to read about.

Productive Morning

Wow, I'm having a very productive morning so far. Before 9:00 AM, I did an hour of research for some articles, cleaned out the refrigerator, sorted out the snack/cereal cabinet, washed the dishes, and started dinner for tonight!

For dinner tonight I am making this recipe for lemon chicken, which looks pretty healthy to me. I've already prepared the wilted cucumber salad from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, and chopped the tomatoes for fresh tomato basil pasta. This will be the first time I've cooked meat in over a week -- we have been eating lots of legumes lately.

Perhaps my new weekend productivity has something to do with the fact that Marty is at work today. He will be working on Saturdays for the next several months. We don't know how long he will have to do this, but it could be until as late as November. I can't even begin to tell you how much this sucks.

Anyway, I think I might have felt a little guilty about pursuing my usual Saturday morning routine (if lazing around for hours can be considered a "routine") after he was out the door at 7:00 AM. So maybe that's why I've done so much already today.

On a different subject, Thursday morning I was driving to work and something -- I'm not really sure what -- flew up off the highway and hit my car. It slammed right into my windshield, scratching the glass in four places, but not cracking it thank goodness. I was on the interstate, going pretty fast, and this thing hit the car so hard that the whole vehicle shook. Before I could see what it was, it was gone. From the way it slammed against the glass, I thought it was a board or something, but maybe it was part of one of those big truck tires.

Anyway, it scared the hell out of me. My heart was pounding for fifteen minutes after it happened. Later, I noticed that as well as scratching my windshield, it had put three big gouges in the hood of my car as well. I feel very lucky the thing didn't come through the windshield. It hit the glass right in front of my face. I'm sure it would have killed me.

Well, off to continue my productive morning. I am going to sign up for yoga class (or as Marty calls it, yoda class) and run some errands. Looks like a sunny day already, so that's something to be happy about!

And down the river's dim expanse
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance -
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "The Lady of Shalott"

Pimping Tennyson

If you enjoyed the poem Mariana (which I linked to yesterday), you might like some other poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Here are a few of my favorites:

• The Lady of Shalott
  
• Maud
  
• St. Agnes' Eve
  
• Crossing the Bar

There are lots more poems by him online at the University of Toronto site.

His most famous work is In Memoriam (A.H.H.), a long collection of poems he wrote after the death of his best friend, Arthur Henry Hallam. I like some parts of In Memoriam, sections of it, but as a whole I find it somewhat overwhelming. The poems were written over the course of about seventeen years, I think, and they range from intense outpourings of grief to erudite questions about god, nature, and poetry itself. But you can check it out for yourself, if you like: In Memoriam (A.H.H.).

I love Tennyson, of course. He was a great old Victorian poet, and my dissertation topic was Victorian literature, after all. But I must admit, I love the Romantic poets Coleridge and Keats even more. Maybe I will do some recommendations for them as well. If you're really lucky.

About the picture: The Lady of Shalott (1888) by John William Waterhouse, a follower of the Pre-Raphaelites. Based on the poem by Tennyson, the painting is housed at the Tate Gallery in London. Waterhouse also painted two other versions of the Lady of Shalott (depicting different passages of the poem).

Polly's not the only cat with a mouse hole: In & Out.

Yes, Odin's Kingdom is updated with a new chronicle (linked above) and the most recent Odin of the Month.

Enjoy!

This painting by John Everett Millais, Mariana, is one of my favorite Pre-Raphaelite works. I had a chance to see it for myself a couple of weeks ago at the Tate Gallery in London. (The original Tate, I mean, which is now known as Tate Britain.)

The painting is dated 1851. Millais exhibited it accompanied by these lines from the poem Mariana by Alfred, Lord Tennyson:

She only said, 'My life is dreary -
He cometh not' she said;
She said 'I am aweary, aweary -
I would that I were dead.'

The Pre-Raphaelites were known for their painstaking representation of nature, and they insisted on working with real settings and live models. The result is a kind of ultra-realistic representation of the world, into which they often placed (usually female) subjects from literature and myth. I love the way this painting blends a fantastic subject (the fairytale world of the poem) with this very realistic natural world. That combination of the fantastic and the realistic appeals to me.

In person, the painting is smaller than you might expect. The colors are amazingly vivid, even today, and the textures look almost real. The velvet of the dress and the stool actually look soft, and the stained glass windows are shiny like glass and sort of glowing somehow as windows should be. But nothing escapes the artist's notice in this picture. There's a little brown mouse in the lower right hand corner of the painting, and his black eyes are so bright that they look absolutely real (believe me, I examined him at very close range).

I don't remember seeing this picture the last time I visited the Tate, in 1988. I think that time I focused mainly on the Turner collection (which of course the Tate is probably most famous for). Feeding my mind.

This time I spent a lot of time with the Pre-Raphaelite art. Feeding my soul.

Time well spent.

Exhausted

I'm completely limp tonight, after work, the gym, cooking dinner, and a hot shower. That's about all I did today.

Tonight I cooked Tamale Pie from the Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites cookbook. I have always liked a few of the recipes from that book, and lately I've been trying some new ones and I like them just as much. I definitely recommend this cookbook. I have ... um, five Moosewood books (I think), and this is probably my favorite for actual recipes we use.

After reading JBB's entry today about the cattle/beef thing, I am glad we are cutting back on meat just now. I don't think either of us would ever become vegetarians (well, I know Marty wouldn't, and I don't think I would), but that story is just plain disturbing.

With this trip to England, we have now both spent so much time in Europe since 1980 that we are no longer allowed to give blood. Why? Because of the risk of mad cow disease. As my friend in England said, "That's a bit insulting." I'd have to agree. (I was actually barred from giving blood before the trip, but those nine days pushed Marty over the six-month limit.)

I am way behind on e-mail. Sorry if I owe you one. But I am headed to bed now. Good night!

More English Cats



Have you ever seen anything so cunning? Polly (above) and Oscar have their own entrance to the boiler room through this little "mouse hole" in the door. How adorable. They have beds and food in there, and it's nice and warm thanks to the hot water heater.

They look content, too, don't they?



I did actually take some pictures in England of things other than cats. Some of them are in the weblog archive, but many more are still waiting to be processed. I just have my priorities in order is all... 1. Cats. 2. People. 3. Pubs. 4. Historic sites.

Something New (yet at the same time very, very old)

Well, I think I am going to give yoga a try. The Connecticut Yoga Center is very convenient for me, and they have lots of classes for beginners in the evenings during the week. Amanda loves her class so much, and I have other friends who feel the same about theirs, that I think I might like it.

This is all part of the ongoing "get healthy" initiative in our house. Recently, Marty and I both decided to make some changes in eating and exercise. I have been cooking healthier meals (mostly meatless) since our return from England. We've both been back in the gym and he's also been rollerblading on the weekends. I think the yoga might provide a nice balance to what I do at the gym.

I'm sure there will be updates as this project continues.

Radio City Girls

Last Thursday I bought my tickets to see the Indigo Girls at Radio City Music Hall in June. I am so excited, for a bunch of reasons. I love their new album, and I can't wait to hear them perform those songs. And this will be my first time seeing them perform with their band -- before, I've always managed to catch them on acoustic duo tours. I love it when it's just the two of them and the guitars, but I've always wanted to see them with their band, too. Also, I've never been inside Radio City Music Hall before. I think it will be really cool to see them there!

Plus it's the Indigo Girls. You know, my favorite musical artists of all time? Why wouldn't I be excited?

No Fooling!

No, I wasn't fooling. Here's the turkey I saw this morning. I couldn't get very close because it kept running away from me, but here it is booking along beside the fence in the parking lot at work. Don't you wish you could have seen me chasing it with my camera?

I didn't think anyone was around when I was trying to get the picture, but my boss came into my office this afternoon and asked me, "Were you trying to catch that turkey or take a picture of it?" So I guess I wasn't quite as stealthy as I imagined.

In other news, Raspberry World has been loading very slowly for me this evening, and I was wondering if it was because of all these images in the weblog for the last few days. To try to get it to load faster, I've switched to just having one day's worth of posts on the front page. For now, anyway. If you missed yesterday, you can find everything in the archive.

Wild Turkey on a Mission

When I got to work this morning I noticed a wild turkey strutting around in the parking lot. I tried to take a couple of pictures of it but I won't know how they came out until tonight. You see these turkeys from time to time here in New England. Usually they just stand around beside the highway, congregating as if they're waiting for directions. This one, however, was moving along at a pretty fast clip. Maybe he was on a mission.

Did I mention the gorgeous cats we met in England? Inca, above, likes to hunt bugs, twigs, worms, leaves, and all kinds of other things. She brings them in through the cat door and then hunts them all over the house.

Ajax, below, is a bit more reserved. Dignified. As you can probably tell from his picture.