Daily Dose of Gratitude #8

1. Bacon.

2. Bacon.

3. More bacon.

4. Even MORE bacon. (You can never have too much bacon!)

5. Emotional support that comes from unexpected corners, when you most need it. (Thank you everyone who's called/IM'd/Facebooked/emailed the past few days with virtual hugs and much-needed perspective.)

Daily Dose of Gratitude #7

Wow -- I've been doing this whole gratitude thing for a week already. Doesn't really feel like it. Anyway, here's today's gratitude:

1. The "keyboarding" (typing) class I was forced to take in 9th grade. I fought against having to take that class like you wouldn't believe. And, wow, am I glad I was forced to take it anyway -- my stellar typing skills have possibly been more useful than any other single thing I learned in high school.

2. This blog: http://www.mattlogelin.com, which has been making me bawl my eyes out. Go read it right now. I'll wait . . . unless you're at work. Do not read that web site at work. Seriously. (Unless you are okay with folks walking past your office and wondering why you're all red-eyed and sniffly in the middle of the afternoon)

3. Stumbling across exactly the right book at the right time. (In this case, Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry).

(Urgh. I'm not really feeling this today . . . Trying to push through the blah to the gratitude . . .)

4. A compliment from a complete stranger about something you've made with your own two hands.

Daily Dose of Gratitude #6

1. The Chia Obama. You have no idea how much I want one of these. (Tho' it actually looks NOTHING like him. And there are some mighty pissed off reviewers on Amazon - it's "racist," apparently, because it grows a big green afro. Uhhh . . . that seems a little . . . overly sensitive.)

2. Some much-needed rain (finally!)

3. Looking out my office window at fingers of fog creeping down the hills near work.

4. The scent of California in winter: wood smoke, damp eucalyptus, and citrus fruit.

5. The little kissy noise you make to get a cat's attention.

6. The cidery smell of apples left too long on the tree.

Daily Dose of Gratitude #5

1. A long dinner with a friend who might just be the slowest eater ever, but is also a good talker, so it all evens out. Laughter with a good friend is always good medicine!

2. Chicken Tikka Masala.

3. The candy cane striped insides of Chiogga beets (and a house full of the earthy smell of beets roasted with salt and thyme).

4. An It's It ice cream sandwich for dessert.

5. Lemons from the neighbor's tree rolling down the gutters of my street. And remembering my dad being totally amused by it when he visited last year (Lemon trees aren't exactly common in Michigan).


(Today's gratitude is all about the food, huh? And I just finished dinner, so I'm not even hungry!)

Daily Dose of Gratitude #4: Inauguration Edition

Hurrah for a new beginning in D.C. ! Here are the things I am most grateful for today:

1. Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural poem.

2. Petaluma market employee making fresh-squeezed orange juice in the sunny alley behind the store, the scent of oranges on the breeze.

3. A new Indian restaurant, a 5 minute walk from my front door, and the anticipation of trying it for the first time.

4. A good friend who shows up at your house after you've had a lousy few days, bringing red wine, knitting, and gossip.

5. Actually caring about the inauguration, the new president, and politics for the first time in forever.

Daily Dose of Gratitude #3

Today is a difficult day for me for feeling gratitude, but that's sort of the point of this whole thing, right? To find the good even when you feel whiny and miserable and would rather just stay in bed all day?

1. Varieties of citrus fruit I'd never heard of before moving to California, all piled up in bins at the farmer's market -- Blood oranges, Cara Cara oranges, Meyer Lemons, Pommelos, Mandarin oranges with their waxy leaves still attached . . .

2. Finishing the knitted hat I've been working on, and it's just as soft and lovely as I'd hoped it would be.

3. Reminding myself "Every time the universe closes a door, it opens a window." (Dear Universe: Please open that window soon. Love, Chris)

4. Ginger-scented lip balm.

5. Watching a co-worker's daughter light up when I gave her an advance copy of a book by an author she loves.

Daily dose of gratitude #2

Today, I'm grateful for:

1. Vernors ginger ale, even in California.

2. Sand between my toes in January.

3. Waking up with the sun on my face and the cat lounging on my feet.

4. Violet's fat white tummy as she lounges on her back in a puddle of sunshine.

5. Giggling over boys with a friend at the farmer's market.

Grace in Small Things

So I stumbled across this a few days ago and it's hit home for me. I don't normally go in for all that Oprah-esque jibber jabber, but something about just taking time to be grateful feels right to me at the moment. The past couple of weeks, I've been feeling restless and gloomy. I've let myself get caught up in being anxious about things that all the anxiety in the world isn't going to fix. (When does it ever, really?) I think it's probably just the winter blues. Somehow they still come, even when you live someplace where the sun actually DOES shine. But anyway, I think that reminding myself of the grace in small things in my life is just what the doctor ordered. So, I'm going to try to do this every day for at least the next few weeks. We'll see beyond that. Here are today's bits of grace:

1. Coming home smelling of the sea.

2. Finding my first heart-shaped rock in ages.

3. Seals as wildlife, just loungin' around on the beach.

4. Sitting on a bluff above the ocean, no one else in sight, a good book in my lap.

5. Tank top weather in January.

6. Soft periwinkle yarn and the time and skill to knit it up into something beautiful.

In a Mood

Forget everything I said yesterday about gratitude. Today I'm just crabby, hold the gratitude. Blech.

I'm in the mood to get away, but my go-to-the-snow plans for the weekend have been foiled by ridiculously unseasonable warmth across California. 80+ degrees in Santa Rosa yesterday! And it's supposed to be in the 40s and even 50s in the mountains all weekend. Not so good for the snowsports.

So, instead, I've been looking at pictures from last summer's various travels, dreaming of escape:

Bryce Canyon, from the rim:

Arms wide open in Bryce:


Tenaya Lake, early morning:

Yosemite High Country:


If only I were there today. Anywhere but here. . .

Crabbiness and Gratitude

Yesterday, I was feeling sort of blue and crabby. Missing D. and old friends, too. Stressed about my messy house. Mad at myself for spending too much money on fabric and yarn and other art supplies I don't really need. Grumpy at the fact that D. still lives so freakin' far away. But, mostly, just blah -- the kind of blue that comes unattached to any decent reason.

So anyway, after hours of sitting on the couch moping, I finally forced myself to get out of the house. It was 65 degrees, the sun was shining hard, and I went for a hike. Just the little regional park near my house, where hiking even a 3-mile loop means stringing together a series of short little trails and still having to do them more than once to get any decent distance. But 20 minutes into my hike, I started to feel so much better.

And then I started to think about how freakin' lucky I am to live where I do. I mean, hello, it's 65 and sunny in the middle of January! I'm out hiking in a t-shirt! The Sunday farmers market was full of great fresh produce and oysters fresh out of Tomales Bay and so many oranges and lemons and grapefruits, along with other citrus varieties I've never even heard of. And in a few weeks, all the spring flowers are going to start bursting free at the side of the roads: poppies and lupine and those trees that are just covered in yellow blooms that I can never remember the name of.

And I live close enough to snow and mountains to get to do stuff like this, too:
(Actually, full disclosure, this picture was taken up in Oregon. BUT, the Sierras are less than 200 miles away, and I'm planning on escaping to Yosemite for some winter fun this weekend. I bought snowshoes on super-sale online last week and, hello, El Cap, Half Dome, and the rest without the crowds? I'm totally there! )

And I'm close enough to the ocean that I can poke around tide pools pretty much whenever I want, checking out all the cool, other-worldly creatures that live there:

Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is that sometimes I get caught up in this "woe is me" bad mood and I just let myself wallow and wallow. And that's just silly. Everyone has things about their lives that they don't like. But I'm so grateful to have ended up where I have, after the years in my early 20s where I was miserable literally every single day. Years in my mid 20s where I moved to a new state every single year. After years in my late 20s and early 30s of grad school misery and the hell that was living friendless in Washington DC. I've really got so much to feed my happiness right here at my doorstep, and I'm so very, very fortunate. I must remember this.

Holiday Craftiness

So this year, I decided to have a totally handmade Christmas. My goal was to make gifts for everyone, and I mostly succeeded. I did end up buying a gift for my parents, but it wasn't an object -- I bought them a night at Indian Springs Resort in Calistoga, including 2 mud baths, for while they're here visiting in February.

Anyway, here's a sampling of what I spent most of November and December working on (uh, instead of posting here).

I made a purse for each of my sisters.

Here's Dana's:
Isn't the fabric for the body absolutely lovely? I almost didn't want to give this one away because I loved it so much. It's the Birdie Sling pattern, from Amy Butler. The body fabric is from the Garden Party Line by Anna Maria Horner. The handle is a brown and white polka dot. I'm not sure what fabric line that was from. And I lined it in either pink or brown cotton. Can't remember now.

And here's Ryan's:

The body fabric is Mocca, by Alexander Henry, and the handle is also an Alexander Henry fabric, I think, but I can't figure out what line it's from right now.

My mom got flannel PJs, which were actually for her birthday (right around Thanksgiving). I'm sorry this picture sucks so much. I wish you could see the adorable yellow buttons better!

There are pants that go with this pajama top, by the way, you just can't see them on the hanger underneath the top, which is long-ish. I would not make my mom go pantsless on her birthday :-)

And for Dan, a cabled scarf, knit in a lovely soft green yard. He wasn't sure he was a scarf person, but it looks great on him!

And also a hat, which looks kind of boring in this picture, but is quite cute on. I love, love, love the flap and wooden button:

I also made felt-lined fabric coffee cup cozies and peppermint bark for everyone at work, jars of caramel-pear butter, and a few other miscellaneous things. I couldn't get a good picture of the coffee cup cozies, but they turned out great. So great, in fact, that I get compliments on the one I saved for myself everywhere I go. I'm seriously considering setting up shop and selling them!

Oh yeah, and I also found time to squeeze in a couple things for myself. A red cabled hat with a pom pom on top:

This is totally why I learned to knit, by the way -- so I could make exactly what I wanted instead of searching fruitlessly for it at stores. And what I really, really wanted this year was a thick, warm, red hat with cables and a pom pom. Voila :-)

And, finally, a pair of fingerless mittens, which I learned to make in a class I took at Knitterly in Petaluma.


So anyway, now that the holiday craft frenzy is over, I'll hopefully find more time to post here. Of course, my camera is currently kaput (the third one in three years! What am I doing wrong????), so I need to get that fixed, first. Does anyone have any advice on how to fix a stuck lenscover. It's just a little point-and-shoot digital camera, and the little lens shutters that open when you turn the camera on are jammed. They open partway, but then get stuck, and they don't close all the way, either. Grrr.

How I Spent My Christmas

I'm in Portland at the moment, for the holidays, and quite enjoying it. I've been here for about 10 days now, and I have several more to go before I return to balmier climes.

I made it into town in the nick of time, just before the ridiculous amount of snow (well over a foot in a town that rarely gets more than a dusting!) shut down the airport, train station, highway, and a good portion of the businesses in town.

Luckily, snow in Portland means even MORE snow up in the mountains. So, thanks to one of D's friends with an all-wheel drive car and traction tires, we drove up to Cooper Spur (on the edge of Mt. Hood, I think) to snowshoe on Christmas day.

Here's D and I in the snow. Second Christmas in a row that we've spent Christmas Day playing in the snow (Last year it was cross country skiing at Teacup Lake, also on Mt. Hood)


And here I am, after Dan pushed me down in the snow. (Well, okay if you want to get all technical about it, I tried to push him, he rather cleverly stepped out of the way. Serves me right, I guess.) I'd like to point out that I am still laughing, even though my pants were filled with VERY cold snow at this point. Good thing D. is cute, huh? Boy knows he can get away with an awful lot!

Spooky

As usual, life has gotten hectic for me lately. I've been working some very long days, with few days off, and also dealing with some family illnesses (D's family, not mine). Plus, I've been, um, kind of obsessed with sewing lately, which always happens when I learn a cool new skill. I've spent most of my free time working away at lovely hand-sewn Christmas gifts for my whole family, so of course, this blog has been the thing to fall by the wayside. But I'm back! (Well, for today, anyway.) With a new installment of my vacation recap.

So when we were on vacation in September, one of the adventures we had was exploring slot canyons in Escalante-Grand Staircase National Monument. Escalante is in southern Utah, east of Bryce Canyon National Park and southwest of Canyonlands. The slot canyons had been recommended to us by multiple people both before we left home and as we chatted with folks on the road, and I'm so glad we took their advice. Slot canyons are scattered throughout the Southwest, where you have a combo of the right kind of rock and other conditions necessary to create them. Basically, they're very narrow canyons eroded into the relatively soft sandstone that's so prevalent in the area. I'm not entirely sure what makes the canyon erode out while the sandstone around it stays solid, but here's a great list of slot canyon locations.

To get to the canyons, we drove 27 miles down an unmaintained dirt road that was nearly washed out in places from recent rainstorms. You have to stop at the Ranger station before you even try to drive out there, just to make sure the road hasn't, you know, disappeared entirely. Thank goodness for my high-clearance jeep -- I lived on a dirt road as a kid, but I have NEVER experienced washboard as bad as this! The road's called Hole-in-the-Rock Road because it apparently ends 50 miles down at a place where some early Mormon explorers had to actually blast a hole through the rock to keep on going. Yeah, we didn't drive that far.

So once we actually made it to the parking area, we had to hike a mile or two down to the canyons from the parking area. First, we headed across the bright orange slick rock that is so ubiquitous in that part of the country. Since we were basically hiking down the sloping face of a huge rock, the trail was marked with cairns (stacks of rocks). Then we followed a (temporarily) dried-up riverbed between soaring sandstone walls for another mile or two. They get some CRAZY flash flooding in the country, and this is what the riverbed ends up looking like as the thick mud dries in the sun:

Isn't that insane? Some of the chunks of mud were twice as thick as my hand! It looks almost like some odd cinnamon-sprinkled dessert, doesn't it? Anyway, you have to check the weather before you head off on this hike, because you do NOT want to be stuck in this riverbed (or worse yet, the very narrow canyons) if it starts raining hard. People die every year in flash floods, apparently. Scary.

So anyway, you hike down this river bed until you get to the entrance to the slot canyon, which is basically just a slit in the rock walls. Here's a picture of Dan in front of the entrance to Spooky Gulch:


So you start heading down the slot and at first it's narrow, but not crazy narrow. Except then it starts to get more and more narrow, and you can see less and less of the sky. This is a view looking up from the floor of the canyon:


I'm not especially easily frightened by stuff like this, but I have to say that I did start to get a little freaked out as we got deeper in. In places, the canyon gets REALLY narrow. Like, so narrow that you have to take off your day pack to squeeze through. And your front and back are STILL both brushing against the walls:


Plus, I just about put my hand down on a rattlesnake taking a nap on a ledge when I went to pull myself up. (Don't worry, mom, we turned around at that point!)

So, as you're wending your way through the canyon, you really start to see why they call it Spooky. And, of course, it didn't help that my lovely boyfriend kept on jumping out from behind curves in the rock and doing things like this:


But despite the spookiness, it was amazingly beautiful:
Look at the color of the rocks! And the sinuous curves. So lovely. In the end, it was totally worth the 27-mile filling-rattling drive, the hike, and even the slight claustrophobia. Definitely something not to miss if you're in this part of the country.

(I should add, there's another slot canyon in the same area, Peekaboo, which is supposed to be equally spectacular. However, we weren't able to get into it the day we were there. You normally have to wade through a shallow puddle and climb about 10 feet up rock wall (which has footholds dug into it) to get into Peekaboo. Challenging, but do-able. But because we were there soon after a huge storm, the shallow puddle was closer to thigh-deep, with the stickiest mud EVER underneath the water AND the ground was so washed out that the climb was closer to 15 feet, with the first foothold above my head. Oh well. Next time, I guess)

Random notes a rainy afternoon

1. I need to remember that eating eating meals composed primarily of white bread for both breakfast and lunch is the best way to spend my afternoon feeling like crap. Ugh. I had a bagel for breakfast and a too-big sandwich for lunch and now I feel all fuzzy-headed. All the caffeine in the world can't help when I feel like this, either. I brought my breakfast and lunch from home every other day this week and felt MUCH better than I do today! I must remember this when I am seduced by the ease of a great big sandwich from the cute bakery down the street!


2. I also need to remember that I MUST stop for candy on my way home from work today. Someone who lives just a few blocks from me told me that she gave out thousands of pieces of candy last Halloween. That's a freakin' lot of sugar. (Though perhaps the rain we're having this afternoon will scare some ghosties and ghouls into staying home!). Also, do you think the neighborhood kids would be mad if I handed out valentines-themed candy for Halloween? It's on sale CHEAP at Grocery Outlet right now! :-)

3. I can feel the annual winter mood creep coming on lately. At this point in my life, I like to think of myself as a pretty happy person. However, winters are still pretty tough on me. As soon as the days start to get late-fall short, I feel myself getting more and more blue. And now the rain has started, which means days that are both short AND grey. It's not depression, exactly, but it IS a lot harder to be in a cheerful mood. And, boy, does it get difficult to motivate myself to do anything, including going to the gym (the one thing that really HELPS with the creeping blues!). Last night, I sat on my couch for pretty much the whole night, thinking about going out to the gym, the fabric store, anywhere but then doing nothing at all.

4. One thing that has also kept me cheerful the past couple of days is baked eggs for dinner. I slice up some zucchini and drop it into the bottom of some ramekins. Then, I saute a handful of sliced leeks with a touch of butter, flour and milk and pour it over the top of the zukes. Add a handful of cooked wheatberries and crack an egg into each ramekin. Top with a sprinkle of shredded sharp cheddar and bake at 350 for 15 minutes or so. YUM! Perfect with a big green salad on the side. Or a baked sweet potato, which is what I had last night.

Tonight, my downstairs neighbor is having a Halloween party, which I will probably go to, though I have no costume. I figure I might as well go, since it's not like I'll be able to sleep, anyway, as long as the party is going on. And I made a very YUMMY pumpkin gingerbread pineapple upside down cake to take.

hiking lake tahoe

Dan and I spent a long weekend in Lake Tahoe a couple of weeks ago -- so pretty! We actually stayed up in Truckee, which might just be the cutest little mountain town ever. Can't wait to go back when there's snow!

I don't watch TV. Really.

So I always tell people that I don't watch TV. Except that it's not entirely true. I own a TV, but I use it only to watch movies. Where I live, the ONLY way to get any channels at all is to get cable. Literally -- you can't even buy a $40 antenna to get three network stations. But I actually DO watch a few shows online. Here's what I think about the season premiers I've seen so far:

1. Heroes. This was a solid C for me. Okay, but I don't GET why people thought this premier was so great. I used to love this show, but the season premier just didn't re-hook me. I may not watch at all this season.

2. Grey's Anatomy. Eh. It was decent but not spectacular. WTF was up with the gratuitous Denny cameo at the end? Denny is DEAD, Grey's Anatomy writers. Just let the man GO already! And I was freakin' pissed at the whole "play with your emotions thing" of having Rose tell Derrick that she's pregnant and then be like "just kidding" and having Mere dream that Derrick was dead but the viewer doesn't know that it's a dream at first. Just stupid -- totally designed to fuck with the viewer's head, not to advance the plot. And it is annoying. So no more of that BS, okay? Shonda Rhimes I'm looking at you.

3. Dexter, on the other hand, had a kick-ass season premier. I think this is the best show on TV right now. Though I am admittedly disturbed by the "help Dexter dispose of the bodies" game on Showtime's Dexter website. Who thought THAT was a good idea?

Oh Give Me a Home . . .

. . . Where the Buffalo Roam.

This was my first buffalo sighting, on the drive from Zion National Park to Bryce. I wish I could say that they were wild, but sadly, they were not -- it was a herd in a fenced pasture next to a resort. I suspect that they are destined to be burgers. There were baby buffalo in the herd, though! And if that's not freakin' adorable, I don't know what is. (Sorry - I didn't manage to get a very good picture of them.) Are you surprised that Buffalo are so skinny in the ribs? I totally was.

Also, on the drive between Zion and Bryce, we stopped for lunch in Hatch, UT at this small town diner called Cafe Adobe. SO good! Dan had the burrito, which was delicious -- it was huge, and crammed with chicken and beans and veggies, not just lots of rice as a filler. I had a southwestern chicken sandwich with hot peppers and avocado and all kinds of other goodness. Oh, and beer-battered fries to die for! Definitely plan to eat here if you're driving through (you don't have many other choices, anyway). A great road food find.

On Being a Regular

As I've mentioned here before, I've lived in a LOT of different places since college. Boston; Chicago; Washington, DC; San Francisco; East Lansing, Michigan. Plus short stints in Philadelphia and Houston and a lot of travel for work to Pittsburgh, North Carolina, Austin, Madison, etc. One of my favorite things about having moved around so much is the way that I was constantly getting to discover something new. Some favorites:

--Alamo Drafthouse in Austin and Houston.

--Diedrich Coffee in Houston - the only time I've ever actually been able to taste the subtle flavor differences in coffee the way I can with wine and beer.

--Reading Terminal Market in Philly. A huge indoor farmer's market in an old train station downtown. It's full of fantastic farm stands, fish mongers, amish dairies, etc. Plus, you can get a killer good cheesesteak at the counter at the front. Just don't expect it to be lowfat :-)

--Capigiro Gelato, whose Pinapple Cilantro and Blueberry Thyme gelato flavors might just be the best things I've ever eaten. So good that I've actually been seriously tempted to spend the $100 plus it would cost me to get 6 pints shipped to me.

-- $2 beer and hot dogs on Thursdays at Lansing Lugnuts minor league baseball games. Their mascot is called "The Big Lug" -- a dinosaur with a bolt through his nose. And they do things like having people down on the field between innings to try to slingshot rubber chickens into a dumpster. Methinks that the dumpster company is, perhaps, a Lugnuts sponsor :-) And did I mention the wading pool behind the outfield lawn and the fact that tickets are only $6? Yeah, you really can't go wrong.

-- Pecan bars at Alliance Bakery in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago. Alliance is also, by the way, a great coffee house for a poor grad student to hunker down for an afternoon with a stack of papers to grade. :-) And so much good food in Chicago in general!

I could go on and on with this list. But back to the point of this post. It's also, of course, incredibly emotionally challenging to move around so much. Just when you finally start to feel like wherever you're living is "home" you move somewhere new and start all over again. When you move a lot, you're constantly having to scour Craigslist for apartment listings, as you try to figure out whether apartments in this town usually include heat and electric, where you'll feel safe walking home late at night, who will take pets. You have to sort out where the hell the grocery store is, and whether it is possible to shop in your new town without having to patronize Safeway (uh, in Rockville, Maryland, the answer is pretty much NO). You have to seek out a new favorite coffee shop -- Starbucks does NOT count. Oh yeah, and then determine out how, exactly, one goes about making friends in Washington, DC or Lynn, Massachusetts or wherever you may be living (my go-anywhere strategy - join a sports team. Kickball totally counts!). While I find all of that stuff really exciting, on one level, it's also pretty exhausting and lonely, at times. Especially when you do it again and again and again. (And when you're not so great at keeping in touch with friends from past residences).

So, anyway, I realized yesterday that I'm coming up on my 2-year anniversary of living in the Bay Area. This is the longest I've lived in a single town since somewhere around 2000 or 2001. Normally, at this point in my "relationship" with a town, it'd already be just a "place I used to live." But, instead, I'm still here, and lately I've been really appreciating the joys of staying put. One of those joys that has really struck me lately is being a regular.

I don't mean to go all Cheers on you or anything, but it IS really nice to go someplace where everybody knows my name. Or at least where the wonderful barista knows my name and that I like my double Americano in the medium-sized cup, not the big one. Where someone greets me by name and with a big smile first thing in the morning.

I've got a few places where I feel like a regular now -- Della Fattoria, the bakery/coffee shop a 5 minute walk from my house. Their coffee is better than the Starbucks on the next block by MILES. And Vanessa really is a wonderful barista. I'm a regular, too, at the fabric store where I've taken sewing lessons, and I'm starting to feel like one at the pizza place in Point Reyes where they make the BEST brick-oven pizzas. Dan and I go out of our way to be hungry everytime we're driving through there so we can stop for pizza and an organic greens salad. Yesterday, the owner remembered us and chatted with us about how we hadn't been in for a while. And it felt good to be remembered.

I've also just started my second season with the same soccer team, I know all the back roads to get anywhere I could possibly want to go in my town, and I'm even starting to get TIRED of some of the same old places in town. I can't remember the last time any of those things happened to me. And you know what? It feels really good to be a regular, for once, instead of the new kid. It's a feeling of belonging that I don't think I've had very often in my life. My parents still live in the same house they brought newborn me home to 32 years ago, but as an adult, I so often feel like the new kid at school, an outsider. Like everyone else has more friends, more people who know their name and smile at them in greeting. But maybe part of that is just a matter of staying put for once. Putting down roots, and seeing what grows.

Bryce Canyon Amphitheater

I think I'm coming down with a cold (AGAIN!), so I can't quite wrap my head around writing anything intelligent. Ugh. But here's a picture of Bryce Canyon to tide you over.

Reading Update: September 20

Well, crap, the book I just finished reading and LOVED just got picked as the latest Oprah book. Now it looks like I just read it because Oprah said I should! That's what I get for waiting to post my response, huh? (Why, yes, I DO, in fact, dig through the shelves at the bookstore searching for a copy without the annoying little Oprah medallion when I buy a book that has been an Oprah book. What of it?)

Anyway, I just finished reading The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski, and it was absolutely lovely. (I can't believe it only has 2.5 stars on Amazon. Oh wait, it's only 6 reviewers. Who all must be idiots. ) Anyway, this book is beautifully written, with the most compelling characters I've met in a long time. And I use the word "met" on purpose -- these characters felt SO real to me, so fully formed, I felt as if I knew them in real life. The book has these wonderful moments of thrilling happiness, but it's also heart-breaking. I cried pretty hard at the end, in fact. The way Wroblewski captures the interior lives of the characters (including the wonderful, loyal, amazing dog Almondine) stunned me. I didn't want this book to end, and yet I also couldn't put it down. Spectacular.