Cause for Celebration

It's a very special night -- the first of three new episodes of House!

To celebrate, I'm making a new recipe: creamy chicken lasagna. So far it looks like it's going to be a little on the crispy side because I forgot and put fat free cheese on top.

Besides eating, which is a given, here's what I've been doing during the writer's strike:

1. Cleaning -- but not really enough to notice


2. Organized my sheet and t-shirt drawers


3. Watching Deal or No Deal and getting irate at the contestants. They definitely wouldn't want me on that show because I'd grab anything over $50,000 and run.


4. Keeping up with the various state scandals by reading the entertaining comments on HK's blog. This is sometimes better than most any TV show.

My new 'dirty' magazine

I subscribed to this magazine just in the nick of time.

I cannot tell you how thrilled I was to open the mailbox and find Mike Rowe peering back at me!

Let this be a lesson to suitcase-obsessed cats of the world

The next time my cat (the one who was napping in my gym bag earlier tonight) insists upon sleeping in the suitcase I'm packing, I'm going to refer him to this story as an example of what could happen.

Of course, I think I would probably notice an extra 14 pounds in my suitcase before I got out the front door.

Book of Remembering

"Oh, S, remember that story about Mr. # that you used to tell?"

I didn't, but from her laughter I knew it must have been a good one.

We were having a lively discussion of quirky teachers we'd had. My elderly relatives were talking along with some of the younger ones. Everyone was having a great time.

Except I didn't remember that story about Mr. #. As my relative re-told her version of the story, I began reconstructing it...but was I really unearthing the memory, or was I just making a new one based on her story?

Later, the same relative warned me to never throw out a particular piece of antique furniture.

"Oh, I would never do that!"

And I wouldn't. I recall my parents painstakingly refinishing the piece that was handed down from my mom's family.

"Do you know where it came from?" She asked.

I had to shake my head "no." The refinishing occurred when I was a kid. If I had heard the story, I probably hadn't even paid attention.

So she told a brief version of its history, and how my mom had picked it out -- of all the things available -- despite the layers and layers of awful paint.

I looked around the room. Gray hair. Tired eyes. Varying degrees of health. I need to remember things, and I cannot rely on others.

So I bought a blank book to record random things I want to recall a decade or so from now. I'll skip the story of Mr. #. It's OK if I forget that one. But things about my parents and relatives, happy memories from childhood -- those things I want to keep with me a while. My goal is one item per day.

2008 Round-up

I haven't been posting much of late, for numerous reasons, but here are some of the things that have happened so far in the new year:

• I went downhill skiing for the fourth time in my life. No injuries.


• I went cross country skiing for the first time and, during an awkward fall that sent the side of a ski up my, um, well -- I cracked my tail bone. (self-diagnosis...it's either cracked or severely bruised)


• Upon learning my age, my elderly female neighbor gasped and expressed deep concern over my withering lady parts. In the future, when revealing my age to people who don't really need to know, I shall reduce my age by five years because I really can't handle the impending doom of my eggs being the FIRST THING people think of when I say my age.

2007 Resolution Grade: C

One of my new year's resolutions last year was to read more. An easy enough resolution, really, but even so, I struggled and average slightly more than one a month.

For the first time, however, I really got into nonfiction. I'm glad about that because I think those books help me the most when it comes to keeping my writing half-way interesting for work.

• Wickett's Remedy by Myla Goldberg
  
• Any Bitter Thing by Monica Wood
  
• The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester
  
• 109 East Palace : Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos by Jennet Conant
  
• Accordion Crimes by Annie Proulx
  
• Any Place I Hang My Hat by Susan Isaacs
  
• The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson
  
• Evening by Susan Minot
  
• The Last Girls by Lee Smith
  
• The Life All Around Me By Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
  
• The Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich
  
• Paris Trout by Pete Dexter
  
• The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell
  
• The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio : How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less by Terry Ryan
  
• Sex With Kings: Five Hundred Years Of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, And Revenge by Eleanor Herman
  
• Summer Sisters by Judy Blume
  
• Wired Style: Principles of English Usage in the Digital Age
  
• Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky