My parents recently celebrated their 40th anniversary. In anticipation of their upcoming party I am scanning many old family photos for a slideshow. I had to share this series because it cracked me up so much. Picture this: Christmas, 1971, Austin, Texas. Newlyweds invite their parents over to open Christmas presents in the small, white, frame house they’ve dubbed “the honeymoon cottage.” The young husband is a technology geek, and […]
In my quest to cure my intellectual laziness, I’m hoping that reading Like Water for Chocolate in its original Spanish will prove to be a watershed moment. Not that I’ve seen any improvement in my attempt to read Kant. If you didn’t see the 1992 movie (or just need a refresher), the plot goes something like this: in 19th-century Mexico, during the revolution, 15-year-old Tita falls in love with her […]
Hello again. It is the start of a new school year, and so I am once again buckling down on my home study of the classics. I rarely blog about what I’m reading, but I am reading nonetheless. Sometimes I’m even reading things that are harder to comprehend than People magazine. But I still love People. This month my on-line reading group is tackling Immanuel Kant, an 18th-century German philosopher […]
Why do intelligent, educated people feel they have to explain away their love of People magazine — or worse, deny its awesomeness? My friend Kathleen informed me that she once belonged to a book group composed of lawyers who made their book choices exclusively from recommendations in The Economist. They read things like a biography of Potemkin. Google tells me that this could be a) a Russian nobleman, b) a […]
I recently discovered that Netflix offers instant streaming of one of my favorite childhood movies: The Incredible Shrinking Woman. So of course I had to watch it with my kids. The boy was deeply skeptical; he had recently watched Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, and complained that he was tired of movies where people shrink. I explained to him that this “new” movie was an entirely different animal. It does […]
Slowly (so very, very slowly) I’ve been reading my way through the classics of Western civilization. I purchased a couple of book collections to that end a few years ago. One is the Great Books of the Western World, published by Encyclopedia Britannica (bought on eBay for roughly 1/6th the retail price) and another is called the Five Foot Shelf of Knowledge, or officially, the Harvard Classics. This set is […]
Fifteen years ago today, I married this man. Not only is he the love of my life, he is my life. I am so grateful as I think back to our wedding day. I’m grateful for my parents, who didn’t freak out when their 22-year-old daughter decided to get married, and who supported my decision emotionally and financially during a time in their lives when making that financial commitment was […]
Have you ever played Brain Quest? It’s a game that contains a series of cards hinged on one corner. Each card contains questions to challenge a child’s skills and knowledge in spelling, math, geography and general knowledge. My 7-year-old and I had a great time playing with these cards tonight out on the patio. She was cracking herself and me up. I wasn’t always sure when she was serious and […]
We went to the bank today and noticed that the vintage items store in the same parking lot was having a sidewalk sale. Sidewalk sales being irresistible, we moseyed on over there. That’s when we happened upon this beauty: It’s perfectly suited for a future refinishing project, preferably something with red Krylon that will end up looking like this: Or turquoise Krylon. I’m more excited about turquoise: No gold handles, […]
It’s Memorial Day, which means we fly our flag on the front porch and The Big M has the day off work. This year our children’s school district made Memorial Day a makeup day for a snow day we had in the winter. Which means… free babysitting! We chose to celebrate with wine and steak. Our 15th wedding anniversary is coming up next month, and we picked today to break […]
Flabby Brain 