Salvage the Bones

Here is yet another award-winning book (National Book Award) that I could have been happy never having read.  When I first heard that it was about Hurricane Katrina, I was intrigued.  I've been to New Orleans pre- and post-hurricane, and I'm a big fan of the TV show Treme which takes place in post-Katrina NO with heart and music as big as what-all.

The first 3/4 of this book leads up to Katrina in Mississippi and hardly seems to have any momentum, story arc, or interest.  Katrina comes with a fury, then leaves, and one would think that kind of disaster might require some kind of soul-searching, or at least some kind of contemplation.

Obviously I am missing something big here that many people see, but I didn't feel as though I wanted to take the effort with this book.

The Sopranos

Better late than never.  Having become fans of a variety of HBO series in the past few years, we had never watched The Sopranos. With the discovery that the LA County Library system has these on DVD and can be ordered to arrive within a few days (especially since these date back over a decade), we took the splurge, and now we have watched the first two seasons.

Well, it's pretty violent at times, but we enjoy the comedy parts, the foibles of family life for these three-dimensional characters, the great writing and acting.

Save the Trees! Save the Paper Storm!

It has occurred to me that in the 30-some years that I have been doing my own taxes that I rarely looked at old receipts.  Of course, some receipts are important for tax deductions, and some are important if the item I purchased has a warranty.  But, really.  Am I going to need to revisit the receipt for a tank of gas, a cup of coffee or some miscellaneous items from Target?  It used to be helpful when tracking expenses, but now everything is online and can be looked up, when necessary.

Today I started collecting the information for the 2011 tax year, and I see that my pile of documents has shrunk.  This can only be good since a few years ago I went through old boxes of tax information to shred, and each year took me longer than I thought it needed to.  When I put gas in the car yesterday and the machine asked me if I wanted a receipt, for the first time I pressed no.

Liberation from the white blizzard!  Well, it's now down to a light sprinkling of snow...

Lime Marmalade

My friend, Denise, announced on Facebook that she had just made lime marmalade and was giving it away.  I took this as an opportunity to not only try out lime marmalade, but to find a happy home for some of my summer peach and plum chutney as an exchange.  (To be clear, there were two small jars of chutney, one of peach, one of plum.)  The swap was made, and now I have this large jar of sweetness ready to open and give it a try.

Moroccan Lentil Stew

A few days ago when we had a bit of winter weather, I made this Moroccan Lentil Stew.  I used the Trader Joe's canned lentil soup as the base and I did add the greek yogurt as a topping. This was really tasty!  Now it's summer weather around here, so I'll have to wait until it cools down to make this again.

Police Investigate Death in Claremont

Yesterday morning on my way to yoga, I saw a police car by City Hall near the Occupy tents.  It seemed a little strange that several officers were talking to each other, but not the people occupying the tents.  After yoga I saw the coroner's van, and it occurred to me that perhaps something else was up, and this notice on the Courier's website confirmed it.

More on Squirrels

This morning my friend emailed me this video link about another way to get rid of squirrels...

The Squirrelinator

At the Oak Glen Retreat Center, I found this squirrelinator hidden in the garden.  I could really use one of those at my house.  See the second photo for the mess the little buggers are making of my tangerines.  The question is, then, how to dispose of the varmints once they are in the trap?  I've heard that one can drown them in a trash can of water.  I wouldn't be able to do that, but maybe someone at my house could.....

Renewal - Again

Last year on this weekend, I joined a group of church women at Glen Ivy Retreat Center for a time of renewal.  It was such a good time that we immediately decided to make it an annual tradition.  Many of the same women made the return this time - a few couldn't come back and a few new ones joined us.

One of the things that surprised us (in the sense that we weren't sure we would enjoy it) was how much fun we had making collages by cutting out pictures and words from magazines to describe ourselves.  Even more fun than creating these was sharing them with each other.  Stories surfaced that had us laughing so hard.  Here is a picture of all the collages after we taped them to the wall (before they started falling down).

The Art of Fielding

Any book with heaps of praise and baseball player at the center will have me from the get-go.  I started this 500-page book last weekend and found myself laughing and turning pages, happy to have found a novel to relish.  Then, about 300 pages in, it started to slog, and by the end, it was only a two-hour waiting room stint (for nothing of consequence) that propelled me to finish the book.  Well, I would have finished it, because even though I wished for about 150 fewer pages, I did like the book.  I just didn't love it the way that I had hoped to.

This is a first novel for Harbach, and though it took him 9 years to write, I will probably read his next novel, whenever it appears.