Goner with the Wind

While discussing our upcoming trip to Baja.

Me: I ordered John Steinbeck's Log from the Sea of Cortez to read while we're there. Its sort of natural history account of his travels down there with another naturalist.
The guy he traveled with was the inspiration for the character Doc in that other book...
[A. is glazing over.... I persevere]...
Have you read Canterbury Row?

A: [long pause, followed by snort] Uh, CANNERY Row?
Me: uhhhh.... That's what I meant!
A: Are you sure you didn't mean For Whom the Mockingbird Tolls?
Me: ....shut up...
A: Wrath of a Salesman?
Me: Look over there! Its a kitten!

Happy Anniversary

Despite the slimy STL weather, we managed a solid day of activities for our first anniversary. Year One gifts are supposed to be paper.... so we went with tickets.
(pause) To the gun show (muscles flexed).
Kidding.
To the Cardinals game.
The day went down a little something like this:

+Pancakes
+Walk around the Park
+Present from A. that was NOT paper, but in a fact a cute new shirt. Stinker. I make him a card while I was out in the field last week, during a rain storm when I was stuck in my tent. It resembles those Mother's Day cards you made when you were 8. Yeah, you know the one.

+Cardinals baseball game. We didn't actually buy tickets ahead of time, as we're not ones for planning... BUT! A nice woman was standing on the street corner GIVING AWAY perfectly good tickets for the vertigo-inducing section hanging precipitously above the first base line. We snatched 'em, up and spent our ticket money on beer, hot dogs, pretzels and ice cream in a plastic hat. Not really being Cards fans, we got bored around inning 7 and left, and from the parking garage we could hear the crowd erupting into endless whoops and hollers and cheers and explosions of applause. Apparently it got interesting once we left.

+Post game nap.
+Motorcycle ride to the
+Batting cages where we worked on our slow pitch softball swings, so we can continue to defend our title as the Tower Grove Co-ed Softball League's most dangerous duo.
+Take-out: Blackthorn for A., Lemongrass for me. Oh, House Special Rice Stick Noodle, how I love your mix of meat fish and poultry.
+Tigers baseball game on t.v. But they self-destructed before a cheering crowd in Anaheim. So instead we watched:
+Zombie Double Header - 28 Days Later & Dawn of the Dead. Nothing says appetizing like bleeding eye sockets, really.

$5 on 6 to Win

We went to the horse track last night- Fairmount Park.
A., sussing out the scene



Winning Ticket




Its going to my head...

Why didn't anyone ever tell me that this is so much FUN?!

To see my big pick winning the race click here

Memory fails me.

The people around me, my family and friends? They are FUNNY, funny people.
Whoo, are they funny. So funny in fact that I am often left thinking, Oh boy, now THAT one is going on the ol' blog. Fo-sho.
And then I wake up the next day, and I can't remember a thing.
It doesn't even take that long. I could get up to go to the bathroom and in the intervening time, completely forget what had me rolling on the ground five minutes before.

So, Ive taken to writing things down. Little black Moleskine, storehouse of slapstick phrases and incoherent babbles.
After which I proceed to completely forget they're in there, stumbling upon scribbles months later, wracking my brain for what this could possibly mean.

Who said Are you a Quaker?! and why was it so funny (besides the obvious reasons).

Recently discovered Moleskine notes:

>>>>>>>>>>>>
A: I wish I could buy into the lifelong meal plan.

>>>>>>>>>>>
L: I think I hear better in my right ear. Maybe its because I'm right handed WHAT?
(and that does accurately depict the insertion of that what)
>>>>>>>>>>>

And my favorite:
Last spring I was in Miami Beach with my two sisters during Spring Break (whoop!). Not exactly for the typical reason-- my youngest sister was at a photo conference, and the other two of us tagged along for the free hotel room (although we were technically on break from grad. school, bikinis in hand...)
Now, youngest sister had an emergency appendectomy just that week, but the conference adn hotel room were paid for so, ever the trooper, she went anyway.
One night, after a few (many) PBRs in the divey-est bar in South Beach, she got a bit confused about which direction her organ had taken just a few days before...

L: I've got something you don't have! An appendix!

And the fact that I found that funny enough to write down has nothing to do with me consuming inordinate amounts of Pabst. Nothing at all.

whoop! that there is FUNNY.

toothpastefordinner.com

Halfway Cross-Country

Southeast AZ to the Mississipi in 22 hours.

That's as close to a cross-country trip as I've ever been... perhaps as close as I'd ever like to be, unless I'm driven in a Bentley by a chauffer named Jeeves who just-so-happens to have excelent taste in both road tunes and road sodas.

suuuummer

"There is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."

Spoken by Ratty to Mole in Wind in the Willows. Do you remember?

leelanau summer 07

thrifting

thrifting
Originally uploaded by gigirose

We're definitely back in the land of the thrift.
Back in the hudson valley people had yard sales instead of jobs.
Everyone was out to make a buck reselling dusty crap.
However, when i have a yard sale i get just as much of a kick out of selling someone a coffeemaker for 50 cents as i do out of finding one when i need it. Maybe its my midwestern upbringing, becuase people here LOVE to sell their junk to you for a bargain. I had almost forgotten the thrill of a GREAT thrift find, like this glass coffee carafe that still had its original tags!

On a side note, I had no idea that Palm Springs had an Aerial Tramway, or that Oklahoma is known for "Indians!" that can do that 80s Robot dance.

recent conversation

A: You're cute and I love you.

Me: Come here! Cuddle me!

A: (walks out of room, toward kitchen)

Me: You don't love me as much as you love toast.

A: (from the kitchen) That's true. Toast, wife, baseball.
(sits back onto couch) Mmmmmmm....
This toast is the best idea I've had in a while.

some would call it crazy.

This is the site of my thesis research.


I sort of stumbled into it, and I think everyone around me went, "Huh? The desert? I thought you wanted to move back to Maine?"
But really? For me its all about the processes, the investigation, the potential for restoration of this landscape. For once, this valley was all grassland.
And then, one day around the mid 1800s a bunch of Anglos rode over the ridgetop, took one look at all that grass and shouted "Great Jehovah! Call in the cows! I"m-a gonna be rich!"

A few decades and few hundred thousand cows later, the grass was gone, and the shrubs moved in, and its been that way ever since, and that's all anyone ever expected it to be again. Its called DESERTIFICATION, folks. Desert-makin'.
EXCEPT! At the site pictured above.... GRASS! Sweet GRASS! slowly returning.
But WHY? That's what I want to know.

Hey, it beats sitting in an office all day, if you ask me.