Photos with My Husband

Pre-1900 Book

I know you've all been wondering when I'd get around to this one. I must say, it was tough. I believe that, no matter how "timeless" the story, books were written at a certain time, for a certain audience. There's no way the author of Gilgamesh would know what life would be like today and how we'd want to be entertained. Sure, the story might be timeless, but the writing style of old books bothers me. I clearly didn't take this into account when making this goal.

Anyway, I decided on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Bad decision. The book might as well have been called "How To Build a Victorian-Era Submarine and Explain How It Works in the Most Boring Way Ever." I took me weeks to read the first hundred or so pages. I decided to switch books right before Christmas. There was no way I was finishing The Worst Book Ever before the end of the year. I thought children's literature might be easier, so I chose Alice In Wonderland.

This book, I liked. So much word play. I took me a couple of days to read, but mostly because I was lazy about reading.

December Mail

Holiday cards are out! Happy Holidays!

December Volunteering

This weekend, I volunteered twice. The first was with One Brick at Holly Nights at Pennsbury Manor. This was my first One Brick event last year, and I had fun handing out hot cider to people who then went wassailing. This year, however, the split us up a bit and most of us were candle watchers. I was teamed up with someone else from One Brick and we spent about 2.5 hours walking through the kitchen house making sure people weren't too close to the candles and that the candles didn't need to be changed. (Pennsbury Manor is where William Penn lived, so there's not electricity, candles were the only way to see.) Not as good as last year, I have to say, but I still had fun.

Then, a mere 12 hours after I finished at Holly Nights, I was at St. James School for their community work day. St. James School is a private school for low income middle schoolers. They're in their second year and are opening a classroom a year. Right now they have fifth and sixth graders. It'll eventually be fifth through eighth. They had a pipe burst earlier in the week and it leaked onto their donated books that they hadn't sorted yet. So, we went through the books and threw out (I know, I was sad, too) the books that weren't salvageable. It was actually pretty quick work, so we were then tasked with sorting by what books would be good for middle schoolers. A lot of people seemed to just drop off old books of theirs, happy to get rid of them, without a thought for the audience. We had books that were for much younger children, books for adults, and encyclopedias from 1985. A word to the wise, children aren't going to be helped by books that think the USSR is a world power. I know throwing out books is hard, but no one wants those.

November Volunteering

Illness prohibited me from volunteering outside the home. I was scheduled to go to Cradles to Crayons, but I was pretty certain I was dying (or had a pretty bad head cold and could barely get through work). Luckily, I've recently taken up the task of writing One Brick Philadelphia's newsletter. So, I'm going to have to count the time I spend writing up articles and trying to get the program to work on my ancient macbook as my volunteering. You should probably sign up for One Brick Philadelphia and get my awesome newsletter. Oh, you'll also get invites to various volunteering opportunities in the Philadelphia region, blah, blah blah. Mostly the newsletter. Though you'll probably be inspired to volunteer. Because I'm such a good writer. As displayed on my blog. So you already know that.

November Mail

Sent a sympathy card.

Photos

 With my husband

 Not all that far up Mount Lemmon

San Xavier Mission

Tucson Trip

Last week, the airport managed to open in time for my flight out. I couldn't have been more excited. I was visiting my sister in Arizona. I had never been to a desert before. And we were going to an observatory (see previous posts about my nerd-dom).

I got in late Wednesday night. Thursday morning, we were up early and went for a trail run. I spent most of the time being terrified I'd see a snake and being thirsty. The thing I learned about the desert is that even if you're not remotely dehydrated, you're thirsty, because the air is making your mouth dry. In the afternoon, we went to the Desert Museum. It was kind of like a garden and a zoo. The afternoon is not a good time to go to a zoo in Arizona. Just about every animal was asleep, or at least hiding from us. Then we went to dinner and drinks and I bought a used copy of the Where in the World is Carmen San Diego? board game. Clearly, we played that.

Friday was a gorgeous, hilly bike ride. I used a road bike for the first time in a long time, and it had the clip pedals, which I had never used before. No falls, and I managed to get out of the clips to save myself from a fall as I got used to shifting with longer hills than I'm used to. I did get really winded a few times, but I'm chalking that up to the altitude, not my fitness. We were supposed to leave for the observatory at 3, so we went home and got lunch, then met up with some of Elaine's friends and found out that it was going to be too humid to use the telescope, so they canceled the event. Boooo. So we went out for Mexican food and hung out for a while.

Saturday, we went to Biosphere 2. I learned that Biosphere 1 was the earth. It was really interesting to see what they intended to do and what they currently use it for. Then we were going to go to a bar to watch the beginning of the Notre Dame game. We got quite a bit side tracked at the garage sale at REI (I got a GPS watch for 1/2 off because of a scratch on the screen that you can barely see) and wound up getting to the bar at halftime. I average watching .25 football games a year. This was an entire half with three overtimes. You're welcome, Notre Dame fans. I'm pretty sure the universe was trying to get me to watch football more regularly, so the game was really interesting AND ND won. Then more food and drinks with more friends.

Sunday, we got up and went for a hike on Mt. Lemon. It was really cool to go from cactus-y desert to a forest that would be at home in the northeast just by going up. I did take pictures so you can see the progression from cactus to trees, but I haven't uploaded any yet. We then went to the San Xavier del Bac Mission. Pretty much exactly what I expected. Since they Dia de los Muertos celebration was going on, we went to check that out in town. It was really interesting, but also really creepy.

Monday, I flew home. I gave up my seat on my flight for a $400 airfare voucher and a $7 food voucher (for the terminal). Then, I checked my bag for free at the gate. I wound up making money on this trip. I was kind of hoping to be able to give up my seat on the next flight to get even more money. Maybe next time.

October Mail

I'm starting to think that 12 months will be too long of a time to run a blog. I seem to be losing interest.

Anyway, dropped a card in the mail today. November tomorrow! Hope you all survived the hurricane!

October Volunteering

On Saturday, I went to the Philadelphia Zoo to help out with Boo at the Zoo. We (One Brick) were assigned a section with crafts and games. For the first hour and a half, I manned the "bowling" game. They had soda bottles with pebbles in the bottom and a small playground ball that looked like a jack-o-lantern. It sounded like fun, and was in the beginning. But, after each roll, I had to go get the ball and reset the "pins". I pretty much always had a line. Another volunteer came up to rescue me. I was so grateful. I then handled the eyeball and spoon run. Instead of eggs on a spoon, they had little balls that looked like eyeballs and I coached the kids in running with them. It was pretty funny to watch the really little kids. They were very concerned with not dropping it and walked so slow.

I was kind of disappointed that there were so many store-bought costumes, but I shouldn't really judge, as I was wearing a t-shirt I purchased at Target the day before.

September Wrap-up

Volunteering:
I feel like I'm cheating a bit with this, but it's all I have presently. I watched my niece. Not that I don't love baby-sitting her, nor do I usually count it, but I need something this month, and I didn't get anything else in this month. I'm currently teaching her to say "cookie" like Cookie Monster; Head Shoulders Knees and Toes in German; and This Little Light of Mine. Please note, she cannot actually do any of those, as she's basically in the phase where she copies tones, but really just says "eeeee". She tries to do the dance to Head Shoulders Knees and Toes, but doesn't really have the balance to touch her toes, so she almost falls over every time.

Mail:
Sent a baby gift to a very pregnant friend. (Totally actually counts).

Bike ride:
Did the loop to the Art Museum last weekend.

Pictures (to be posted later):
A few from my cousin's wedding, including one with my husband.

Podcast Challenge 12

Woohoo! Cross Podcast Challenge off the list! For my last book, I picked Man vs. Markets by Paddy Hirsch, who is the Senior Producer of Marketplace for American Public Media. For those of you who are not nerds, it's a segment on NPR.

I'd say the book is a finance primer, with a bit of economics thrown in. It starts off very basic with what it means to hold a stock, and continues on to more complicated things like credit default swaps and quantitative easing. It looks at Wall Street, the Fed, and the Treasury and their roles in the economy. The last chapter basically explains what happened to lead up to everything with Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, and the whole mid-September 2008 debacle. It was really easy to understand and is clearly meant for people who know nothing about finance and economics, however, if you know a little but want to know more, this is the book for you. I found the last chapter to be much easier to understand than  Too Big to Fail (which I also recommend because it offers a more in depth description of EVERYTHING that happened, but you will need to devote at least a week or two, if not more, to that one, and constantly look up financial terms if you really want to understand).

Podcast Challenge 11

How does one consider a cookbook read? I decided once I skimmed most of it, made a couple of recipes, and it was due back at the library qualified as "read".

I had seen Sandor Katz speak a few months ago about fermentation (promoting his book, The Art of Fermentation) and immediately wanted to give it a try. He made everything seem so simple. I had canned a few things before, but this went beyond vegetables, to cheeses, drinks, and meats. I currently have sauerkraut and mead fermenting in my apartment. The mead is almost done, and the sauerkraut can be eaten whenever. I cannot wait to try the mead. I'm definitely buying the book later.

Podcast Challenge 10

Moonwalking with Einstein was not quite what i was expecting. Instead of being a self-help book, it's about Foer's year-long journey from covering the world memory championships as a journalist to competing in the US memory championship just a year later. He was in awe at how much information people could retain and recall in a short period of time. But the competitors he talked to were quick to tell him that everyone could do it, it's all parlor tricks. So he sets out to build his memory to that and along the way talks to experts and savants about their memories and their tricks of the trade. Savants generally can't explain how they remember, but people who have trained share a lot of the same tricks.

The tricks Foer gets into are interesting, and work. Early on, a mentor helps him learn how to memorize a list of things. As he walks through what he did to remember each item, it got stuck in my head. I still remember everything until I stopped focusing on that segment. And I couldn't recall anything past that point immediately after I read it.

While it's "easy" (it does require a daily training), it seems pretty pointless in today's world for day-to-day info. Foer himself notes it would've been great in high school and college to know these techniques, but, as an adult, it's just so much easier to write a list and put a number in your phone.

August Mail

I'm going to see Newsies on Broadway! You either have no idea what I'm talking about or are exceedingly jealous of my life choices that have lead me to this point-living within a day's drive of NYC, enough disposable income, the drive to pick a date, and having a sister who fronted me the money. Anyway, I mailed her the money I owe her for the ticket.

I also mailed another RSVP. That should be it for RSVPs for the year.

Podcast Challenge 9

In the Garden of the Beasts by Erik Larson was about the American ambassador to Germany from 1933-1937, William Dodd, and his family's time in Germany at the rise of Hitler. Hitler was chancellor when they got there, and things were already pretty bad for Jews, but Americans were pretty disinclined to believe it. Dodd got a sense that it was worse than most Americans believed pretty quickly, but his children experienced a different side of Germany and it took them a while to come around.

I found In the Garden of the Beasts to be an interesting look at pre-war Germany. Granted, I probably would've found any viewpoint interesting. I wasn't really familiar with the events in Germany leading up to invading Poland. To see it from an American ambassador's viewpoint, as well as his adult children, made for a good read. America had many issues with Germany, but primarily wanted Germany to repay debts and wanted to avoid another war. Dodd, however, realized early on that Hitler wasn't just going to go away (as many believed), and thought that he needed to show American values, which meant skipping diplomatic events when attendance would imply approval of Hitler's regime. He was a controversial figure in the state department for his lifestyle (having not been independently wealthy when appointed ambassador, Dodd was very frugal, and felt, during the depression, people representing American overseas should show some austerity) and his all-but-completely-transparent attacks on the Nazi regime when many Americans favored isolationism and keeping Germany happy to promote peace.

His daughter, Martha, was a quite different character. Having been newly divorced when arriving in Germany, she immediately took advantage of the chance to meet new people and start new relationships. She was romantically in linked to German officials, Soviet diplomats, and a whole assortment of intellectuals in Berlin at the time. She entered a particularly charged relationship with a member of the Soviet delegation and, after finally seeing that Nazi brutalities weren't just isolated incidents, started having communist leanings herself.

August Volunteering

I woke up early on Saturday, got my grocery shopping done, then headed to Pennypack Park in NE Philly to help with the clean-up effort there. I had toyed with canceling on Friday. I didn't feel like driving there (it was farther than I had thought when I signed up), I didn't want to skip the farmers market, I realized that between the clean-up and baby-sitting I'd be gone most of the day. But, I felt bad canceling so late because it was a Saturday morning event, and a lot of people cancel at the last minute and we're getting close to the end of the month and I needed to volunteer. Good job, blog!

I got there, was handed a trash-picky-up thingy, a trash bag, and a bucket for cans, and headed on my way. Pretty early on, I found a half-full can of PBR. Apparently, someone was unaware that people on drank PBR because it was a crappy beer and drinking crappy beer makes you cool (?). Anyway, that person just dropped the can in the park. It was pretty much the most awesome thing we found for a while, when I found a toy gun. As we ventured farther into the park, we decided to go off of the paved trail and follow a path into the woods to find where the teenagers party. Success! Another girl found a joint. We also found a lot of beer cans and beer bottles and capri suns. Interesting party.

I was surprised how many people who were using the park thanked us. Walkers, runners, cyclists. One guy on a bike stopped to ask how he could volunteer. Another guy on a bike didn't stop, but yelled as he passed us that there was a dead deer way far away from where we were. We were like "um, thanks..." I don't think a deer would fit in my trash bag, nor did I want to carry it. Or be near it. Unless it had been butchered.

We got back and found out that someone else had found part of a real rifle and another had found handcuffs. They were the winners of the day. And I'd totally do a Pennypark Park clean-up again. It was awesome.

Garden Update

I've pretty much spent the summer making zucchini bread and bringing it places. I add zucchini to any meal I can think of a use for it. Lesson learned for next year: plant less zucchini.

In other plant news, I've eaten some green beans and a few cherry tomatoes. Snap peas and Brussel sprouts never really took off. I think a creature ate them. I finally pulled up all of the beets I planted last week and just pickled all of them.

Yesterday, I went and did some serious work in the plot. I pulled up the zucchini plants that have stopped producing. I picked the Swiss chard and the last of the green beans (then pulled up those plants). I pulled weeds all over and immediately outside of my plot. I didn't bring my camera, or I'd show a picture of what's left. The cherry tomato plant and tomatillo plants are on the right side. The bottom is full of vines for sweet potatoes, and the corner they all form has the remaining zucchini. The rest of the garden I tilled by hand, then planted snap peas (2nd time's a charm?), beets, and Swiss chard. Clearly, those are not growing, so it's just brown for the rest of the garden. It looks kind of funny with two sides being lush and huge and the remainder being brown.

I'm finally getting a lot of cherry tomatoes, but they were still green yesterday. The husks of the tomatillos are there, but the fruit themselves are not big yet. Hopefully in a week or so I'll be overrun with those and bringing salsa verde everywhere.

July Mail

Wedding RSVP. These are boring.

Bike Ride #3

After work today, I met up with a friend for a bike ride. Last time we met up (2 weeks ago) we did about 16 miles and planned to do fewer this week since a) it's been a million degrees out and b)  we decided to bike the other direction, towards bars rather than woods, so we figured we'd stop for a drink. However, it was overcast, a little breezy, and a lot cooler than it has been recently, so we decided to go farther. I mapped it out when I got home and it was 25.3 miles total for me. This puts me so far ahead of 25+ miles bike rides than I had hoped to be. I'm also pretty psyched because it comes during a week that I took off from running, so I've been feeling a bit like a slug recently. I'm now hoping to do at least three more this long now.