sprite writes
broodings from the burrow

November 11, 2015


plans to combat the winter blues
posted by soe 3:03 am

I like living in places where there are four seasons; I may not enjoy all of their aspects, but I do enjoy aspects of each. Sadly, though, winter does not love me back. Short, cold days are not helpful to one who prefers to sleep in: when you rise at noon, there are only a maximum of four hours left of light near the solstice, and that’s only if I bound from my bed straight outside, something that would only happen if my house were on fire, and even then I’d have to stop to stuff the cats into carriers. I don’t even have the benefit of sunlight streaming through windows the way I once did, living as I have the past dozen years below ground. I like the night, but the human body is meant to spend time outdoors and gets out of balance when denied Vitamin D from sunlight. You can take supplements, but it’s not the same.

We’re now also entering our third year of Rudi coaching skiing. The first year was abortive, with his injury occurring so close to the new year, but last year found him gone every weekend day (and several nights) between Christmas and March, save for the weekend he took off to celebrate my birthday (and make up for forcing me to spend my 40th in a hospital room with him). This winter promises more of the same, with the added challenge of also including two weekday nights of his being gone as well each week.

It will be fine. I will be fine. However, I will be more fine if I have a plan. And a schedule of activities that demand my attention and, frankly, my interaction with beings who are not my cats.

So here’s what I’ve been thinking: I’m going to come up with six to ten things I really think I can dig into during the winter season. And, yes, I am terrible at following plans, particularly once they’re public: once I declare them to the world, pretty much I abandon any intention of following through on them. (This flies in the face of everyone who needs to be held accountable by others, but I certainly don’t care what you think about my ditching a plan if I no longer care about it.) But this one might work in the same way those weekend to-do plans I occasionally share here on the blog do: when I get lost in my head and don’t know what I should be doing, this would offer me several things I could work on instead of moping. (It’s not dissimilar from Inigo and Vizzini’s plan in The Princess Bride: when a job goes wrong, go back to the beginning.) There’d be no obligation to get them done, but they’d offer several paths out of the darkness. And let’s face it: when you’re in the darkness, it’s good to know there are any paths nearby, let alone multiple trails.

When I first came up with this idea, I thought it could be fun to tie it to the alphabet, and I thought about starting at the end, particularly since several of my ideas start with later letters:

Ukelele: I have one. I’ve bought video lessons to learn how to play it. I’d like to be able to play at least one song by the time next summer’s camping season comes along.

Volleyball: This is my favorite sport and my one weekly social obligation most of the year. The team I played with this fall wants to play together again when the season begins again in mid-January, so that’s good. Plus, it corresponds to one of the weeknights Rudi will be working.

Writing: I’d like to do a better job at making writing part of my life, whether it’s here or in a journal or in a longer piece. Plus, it’s adaptable: I can go to a coffeehouse or the library and write there, or I can do it at home if I don’t feel like going out.

Yoga: There are several studios near my apartment and I always feel better after I’ve taken a class. Also, it is a thing that requires my leaving the Burrow, possibly on a weekend, and that involves being in a room with other people, even if it’s not necessarily interacting with them.

So those were my core ideas. Right now, “X” and “Z” are unaccounted for. “Z” could be for zoo, which is free, nearby, and open during the day. But I’m not positive how often I’m going to want to tramp around the zoo during the coldest season. “X” is harder, but if you expand it to include “ex-” words, it could stand for excursions, which would, again, serve to get me out of the house, and could include other people if I find some who also want to venture out into the world on the weekend. Or expunge, and I could focus on clearing stuff out of our apartment, which would have the added perk of Rudi not being around when I got rid of all his stuff instead of mine. (Kidding! Mostly.)

I could also back it up a few more letters and including pilates or pasta-making, sweater-knitting, and telephoning faraway friends or traveling to see them.

Or I could abandon the alphabet tie-in altogether, although I like some of the out-of-the-box thinking it could require to complete.

Either way, I have a few more weeks to figure it out. The ski season doesn’t begin in earnest until December, and the holidays keep me entertained (and busy) until the new year. But it would be good to have a plan ready for January and February, even if I chuck it out the window once I’ve shared it with you.

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November 10, 2015


top ten tuesday
posted by soe 1:51 am

Technically, this is Monday’s post, but as I write so late at night, no one else will recognize that my answer to The Broke and the Bookish‘s Top Ten Tuesday topic isn’t appearing exactly when it’s supposed to…

Top Ten Books-to-Movies We Just Can’t Wait For:

  1. J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: Did you see the photos that were released last week?
  2. Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor and Park: She’s writing the first draft of the screenplay herself.
  3. Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Okay, so I didn’t read the book (although I was given a copy as a gift), but the previews really do look like a lot of kick-ass fun.
  4. Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus: I wonder if they’ll film it in black and white (and red).
  5. Ransom Riggs’ Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children: There are a lot of big names attached to this film, not the least of whom is Tim Burton as director. I liked the book right up until the end, when I discovered it wasn’t a stand-alone, and I’ve unreasonably held that against it since then, but if the previews look good, I might be willing to get over it.
  6. John Green, Lauren Myracle, and Maureen Johnson’s Let It Snow: IMDb informs me some filming has already taken place for this interconnected trio of YA romance stories.
  7. Roald Dahl’s The B.F.G.: This is my favorite Dahl title, and I hope Steven Spielberg won’t mess it up.
  8. G. Willow Wilson’s Ms. Marvel: They pushed the release date back on this earlier this fall, partly, I fear, because there remains some doubt about interest in a female-fronted superhero. God, I hope Supergirl is doing well enough to kill off this stupid industry belief once and for all.
  9. Beauty and the Beast: It’ll star Emma Watson and Ian McKellen.
  10. Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book: Apparently this got pushed back, but Ron Howard’s been attached to the project as director.

How about you? Any literary films you’re looking forward to?

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November 9, 2015


weekending
posted by soe 1:50 am

This weekend went by faster than I wanted and less satisfactorily than I expected. I suspect that the former will remain true through the end of the year, although I am hopeful the latter was merely an off mood.

Friday evening began pleasantly. I met Rudi and Shawn for dinner prior to their James Bond movie. I like Bond in small doses and only for free, so I came home, napped, and finished a book.

Vanilla-Poached Quince with Cinnamon Whipped Cream

Saturday arrived with drizzle and damp, so Rudi and I responded by staying in pj’s all day and stringing up a new strand of colored lights around the periphery of the living room. We listened to Hamilton and, later, a webcast of a travel talk about France. We reminisced about our trip seven years ago this week, trying to recall certain details, like what we ate, and thinking fondly about our favorite stops. We improved leftover soup cooked earlier in the week and ate some of the quince I poached last weekend. I knit on my shawl while Rudi’s favorite college football team played on national tv and read some (me, not the football team; that would have been weird).

Berries and the Boy

I overslept the morning, not rising until noon today. A short jaunt to the farmers market proved others had not done similarly, as neither baked goods for breakfast nor milk for the week were available. The sun had peeked out, though, so after returning home to eat something and do a load of laundry, I made plans to head out on my bike. Rudi came home from his bike ride, so he joined me for a jaunt to the garden and then a trip to Georgetown, where we purchased snacks and hot drinks. We spent a pleasant hour or so down by the river before the sun disappeared into Virginia. I’ll have to make sure to get out on the early side for lunches this week to soak up some more Vitamin D, because the early sunset is discouraging and certainly doesn’t improve my outlook. I’m finishing tonight with a chapter of the final Harry Potter book, where Harry, Ron, and Hermione are carting around the cursed necklace and generally having a miserable time of things. It’s comforting: I might be having an uninspired, unproductive weekend, but at least I’m not fleeing from the world’s worst criminal. Perspective: it’s good to have.

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November 8, 2015


january 2015 reads
posted by soe 2:26 am

Once upon a time, back in the early days of my blog, I decided I’d review the books I read here. I was better about it at some points than others, but it used to get done, for the most part. But three years ago I took part in the judging for the Cybils Award and it broke my reviewing mojo. I have some theories about why that happened, but mostly it’s unimportant. I’ve never actually enjoyed the process of reviewing what I’ve read, but I love having the record of them to refer back to.

I’d like to get back into that habit and intend to do so more fully and contemporaneously in the new year. But in the interest of better being able to share a favorite reads list at the end of this year, I thought some capsule reviews might suffice.

Here’s what I read way back in January:

My True Love Gave to Me, edited by Stephanie Perkins. 2014. 321 pages.
A dozen holiday-themed, romance-filled stories from some of the most recognized names in YA, including Perkins, Rainbow Rowell, David Levithan, Holly Black, and Jenny Han. I’d read and enjoyed books by most, although not all, of the contributors, and so had suggested it might make a nice Christmas present last year. Some of the stories are contemporaries, while others have a fantasy setting. Some are, as with any collection, stronger than others, but not always the ones I would have expected based on the authors’ novels. I especially enjoyed “It’s a Yuletide Miracle, Charlie Brown,” from Perkins and Kiersten White’s “Welcome to Christmas, CA,” but I can totally see myself re-reading some or all of the stories every holiday season or two. If you like the current YA novels, enjoy winter holiday (especially Christmas)-themed stories, or like teen romances, I recommend the buying or borrowing the collection.

The Amazing Thing About the Way It Goes: Stories of Tidiness, Self-Esteem and Other Things I Gave Up On, by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. 2014. 224 pages.
The Yarn Harlot offers up a collection of humorous essays that don’t have to do specifically with yarn. Instead, they have to do with a range of modern-day topics, including parenting, email, invasive skunks, messiness, and personal appearance. Another Christmas present last year, I enjoyed the essays while reading them, laughed aloud at several, but overall didn’t love them the way I do Stephanie’s blog or her previous knitting-related collections and had to leaf back through the book to have any recollection about what she’d written about. Good for a chuckle, but I’d probably check it out from the library, rather than buying it.

2 A.M. at the Cat’s Pajamas, by Marie-Helene Bertino. 2014. 272 pages.
‘Twas the day before Christmas and nine-year-old Madeleine, despite having the best voice in her grade (and neighborhood) and a recently dead mother, will not be singing the solo in the holiday concert that day. In fact, the day is about to go so sideways, that by afternoon, she’s been expelled from school. Her fifth-grade teacher, Sabrina, just ran into a woman she once knew at a bakery and now has to go to a dinner party with a group of old friends that includes an estranged, now-married flame. And Lorca, the owner of The Cat’s Pajamas, one of the most famous nightclubs in all of Philadelphia, is in danger of losing the club because of a gigantic fine for fire code violations and his teenaged son to inattention. Alternating between their perspectives, we inch closer to a holiday none of them are looking forward to. But before it arrives, they’ll all experience a night at the jazz club they’ll never forget. I was really looking forward to reading this book during Advent last year, but my library copy didn’t come in until January. The idea behind Bertino’s debut novel was a strong one and her characters were well-plotted out, and it’s clear she was trying to make the book’s structure resemble a jazz piece, with recurring motifs and story lines that looped back into one another. But, that said, it was hindered by inadequate editing, which might have reined in her love of vocabulary and flowery phrases (again, I imagine this was intended to be reminiscent of some of the complexities of jazz) and tightened up the time frame. Ultimately, it was just an okay book.

Ms. Marvel, Vol. 1: No Normal, by G. Willow Wilson with art by Adrian Alphona. 2014. 120 pages.
The first collection of Ms. Marvel comics features Kamala Khan, New Jersey high school student, comic book fangirl, and Muslim daughter of Pakistani immigrants. Sneaking out to a party one night, Kamala undergoes a transformation where she gains superpowers that include elasticity, super strength, and the ability to change her appearance and rescues one of her classmates. (If you watch Agents of SHIELD or any of the later Marvel movies, you may recognize Kamala’s symptoms as making her one of the Inhumans, a human with recessive alien DNA that, when triggered by some external force, gives the person one or more super powers.) Kamala deals with this transformation on her own for a while, trying to figure out how to be a teenage crime solver, but eventually loops in her best guy pal, who helps her with her costume and by serving as someone who knows her whereabouts in case something goes wrong. But even with his help, it’s still tough solving crime when you still have to get your homework done and you sneak out of the house past your very strict parents. If you like comic books, you’ve probably already read this, as it’s probably the highest touted new series out in the past couple years. If you haven’t, though, or if you like graphic novels or YA with feisty heroines, grab this one as soon as you can. I read a library copy, but bought Volume 2.

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November 7, 2015


feeling lazy (katy)
posted by soe 3:10 am

Today kind of felt like summer, so I thought I’d share an FO from July (!!):

Lazy Katy

This is my Lazy Katy Shawl, designed by Birgit Freyer.

Lazy Katy

It’s knit with pretty much a whole skein of Lang Yarns Jawoll Magic Dégradé in colorway 85.0059.

Lazy Katy

I liked the yarn and loved the colors, but was irritated by the fact that the yarn had broken at the factory, and a knot had been tied, breaking the color patterning. I should have done something about it, but I literally just shoved the tied bit to the back of the piece and kept going. By the time I realized that was a dumb thing to have done, it was inches later and I decided I could live with it.

Lazy Katy

I cast on back in April and finished it up as part of my Tour de France knitalong on July 26. (I particularly love the lacy edging.)

20150727_203713

The photos are from my parents’ garden, which is truly spectacular in the summertime.

Lazy Katy

Now I just need the weather to feel more like November so I want to wear a wool shawl!

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November 6, 2015


doing his job, reflexes, and sing along for cheap
posted by soe 2:29 am

Fall(en)

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. A MetroAccess van driver helping a frail, elderly woman into the store, arm-in-arm, chatting away.

2. My cats, like most, occasionally throw up hairballs. Because of this, I have become very good at realizing I’m stepping in something squishy and recoiling before I put my full weight down on it. This skill came in handy when I, while wearing flip flops, accidentally stepped on a dead rat lying in the sidewalk.

3. Thanks to a sale price and two hoarded gift cards, I’m able to procure the Hamilton soundtrack on cd for 37 cents at Barnes & Noble. I know the libretto booklets are going to come in handy for nailing some of the quicker rap bits.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world this week?

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