The Next Dark Age
We're in it Now
Another Trip to DC
Back in Washington this week, but everything was goofy.
United Airlines shifted stuff around at DCA, so I was all confused. I stayed at a different hotel, so I was more confused. L’Enfant Plaza Hotel is not fancy. I understand from my meeting planner guy that I was on a not-renovated floor that could use some renovation. But the location is great, the room was clean, the bed was comfortable and it was much quieter than the Holiday Inn Capitol.
I arrived at the office, thinking I was going to grab Stefphanie and go to our favorite deli for lunch. But then I saw this:
I seemed to recall my online friend Darth Kittius mentioning it once. She does DC restaurant reviews on her blog sometimes and has included the food trucks. I ordered the Mt. Fuji – whole grain bread, brie and fuji apples. It would have been the best grilled cheese ever except that I ate it with my favorite chips – dill pickle – and the sweet of the sandwich didn’t quite complement. But I would totally eat there again.
So the meetings all went well and then last night I had an awesome dinner. I don’t normally do the fine dining thing on the road, but our 401(k) people were in town and Stefphanie made the reservations. She knows that I am a picky eater. We went to Central Michel Richard, which seems to specialize in upscale comfort food.
My friend Jim agrees with me that if one is at a nice restaurant and Mac & Cheese is on the menu, one must really go for it. So he ordered the fried chicken, I ordered the Lemon Chicken burger and we split a side of the macaroni. The Lemon Chicken burger is chicken that is grilled and kind of diced up, then mixed with just enough lemon-y batter to hold it together in a patty and then seared. Very tasty and not greasy at all and serious points for creating something interesting that even I will order. I tried Jim’s fried chicken and it was also fabulous. David ordered the lamb which I did not try, but he was quite pleased.
Happily, I saw the dessert menu early and decided against appetizers. We ordered the apple tart, Michel’s chocolate bar and the lemon tart for the table. All three came with ice cream. I would order all three again. The apples were positively infused with cinnamon-y goodness, although my standard complaint of Too Much Pastry Not Enough Fruit applies. The chocolate bar had a wafer-y thing going on and avoided being too heavy or too light. The lemon tart had just the right tartness and the best merengue I have ever had.
This meal was so good I wish I had taken pictures. We had reservations at 6pm and got in just ahead of the crowd. Highly recommended.
Year of Wonders, by Geraldine Brooks
Book 19
Geraldine Brooks is a journalist/novelist and I love her work so much that I read an entire novel about a small town in England ravaged by the Black Plague in 1666. They make a pact to close off the town with no one coming or going until it is over. The story has all of the terrible things you would expect:
- A whole lot of men, women and children end up dead.
- Neighbors turn on each other.
- A terrible few choose personal gain.
- Women are accused of witch craft.
- SPOILER The minister isn’t quite as great a guy as he seems.
And it is still freakin’ fabulous.
We have the study of human nature is a particular set of dire circumstances. Who turns to faith, who turns to science and who turns to superstition? How does that change as things go from Bad to Worse? Who makes the best of it, in whom does it bring out the worst? What summons the heroism among people and what will make them absolutely crack? How is the world different when it is over?
The story moves swiftly and doesn’t linger too much on the gore. More importantly, the heroine is worthy. I will officially read anything this woman writes.
At One Year
Gibbs, you will remember, was adopted as a 10-week old puppy. It was nine days from the time we lost our old, sweet Shadow to the day we called Wright Way Rescue about Gibbs. I am having a hard time finding his official rescue baby pic, but this was his first official camera phone portrait:
He continues to be very high energy. And while he is very much a pack animal – both at home and at Doggie Do Rite – he remains anxious in new places and with new people. His response to anxiety is the barking.
OMG with the barking.
So far, he and Fiona are good together. Last weekend, when my brother came to visit with the kids, Gibbs was still barky, but less so. He went to the front window and sat in his chair. After a while he came to sit with me on the couch, letting Fiona soak up all of the Stranger Attention.
And when Fiona goes off “working” and won’t come inside, (or upstairs, or wherever the people are) he generally sticks with the people and avoids escalating the drama. He doesn’t love drama.
The longer I have dogs, the stronger my feeling that we end up with the dogs we deserve. Gibbs is slightly neurotic and it is impossible to shut him up. But boy is he good with his pack.
Romping and Wrestling
OK, I will seriously write an actual post tomorrow. But in the meantime, here is a quick video to show you how the dogs are doing. The short-haired aggressor would be Gibbs. The long-haired one that can fight while lying down is Fiona.
What Happens When I Actively Try to Travel Light
I generally travel light. This blog has the running joke about Things I Forgot when I travel. This time, I out did myself. It started because I didn’t feel like lugging around the laptop. And since I was only going to two nights, I didn’t want to check a bag.
blahblahblah
I forgot my glasses. I was dangerously low on contact lens solution. These were particularly urgent matters since I drove to the airport and would have to drive myself home.
I wore a skirt on Tuesday, and forgot to pack some slacks to change into that night. Oh, and forgive me for getting personal, but I hadn’t shaved my legs. Which I realized in the shower Monday night. And do you think I brought a razor?
I bought a razor and contact lens solution at 7:30 Tuesday morning.
People, I shaved my legs (dry) in the ladies room outside my meeting room at the hotel. 10 minutes before the scheduled breakfast.
This is officially a new low.
Fiona’s Big Weekend
When I picked up Gibbs at Doggie Do Rite Friday afternoon, I told Stacy that I was a bit worried because Gibbs (all play all day) is not interested in playing with Fiona. She had tried to engage him several times and he barely blinked at her.
“He is snubbing the new girl,” Stacy said.
That lasted about one more hour before they were tearing around the yard in such a fashion that there is still mud all over my house. Here is one of their favorites:
First, Gibbs takes off down the side of the house so fast I didn’t see him do it. But Fiona did. “What are you doing in there?!”
“Waiting to pounce on you!”
Don’t feel sorry for her – she has twice pounced on him when he was trying to pee. Don’t feel sorry for him, either. She was lying in the grass and he sat down four feet away. She looked at him, and he picked up a hind leg as though to scratch his ear. When she turned her head, he jumped on her back!
It is so on.
In other news, I took her to meet Mary at Wags on Willow on Saturday. She was perfectly behaved. But she doesn’t like the three story tall hot air balloons outside the Verizon store. Can’t blame her.
Finally, Fiona met my brother’s kids this weekend. While it wasn’t a perfect scene – she barked too much and took off out the front door when we tried to leave for lunch – she did very well.
Next up this week – I have a business trip, so Mom is handling the two on her own. Also, she has her evaluation at Doggie Do Rite.
I think she’ll do just fine.
The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery
This was a favorite among the local book clubs that I picked up when it arrived at the Library’s Used Book Store. One of those stories without (or with little) plot, the twist being that it is a French novelist writing about people in Paris.
Renee is a concierge, which seems to be something like a building manager in a swanky condominium building. She is extremely cultured, particularly well-read and prefers to let the world think she is a game show watching fool. Paloma is a precocious 12 year old with a vapid, self-absorbed mother, an even worse sister and rather irrelevant father.
They each live inside their own heads. Then a new guy moves into the building and has them all pegged in an instant. Drama ensues.
The misleading thing here, and in the book jacket summary, is how long (how very long) we listen to Renee and Paloma trading chapters, revealing their “profound thoughts” and otherwise pontificating before the new guy arrives on the scene.
On a good page, I would call it a slow burn. On a bad one, I would lose patience. But I appreciated the concept of revealing the ways that people hide themselves in plain sight out in the world but don’t really live among those around them.
One More Thing to Love about My Library
Reprinted from my blog on the Glenview Patch:
I love to read. My average is at least one book per week, and has been for many years. But when I started making blankets with our local chapter of Project Linus, it really cut into my reading time. So I went to the Glenview Public Library and took a look in the audio section. There were plenty of books from my “to be read” pile (OK, it is a bookcase. An overflowing bookcase. With piles in other rooms.) to be found. I began checking them out and was back “on pace” in no time.
In an attempt to control the size of the “to be read” pile (“TBR” to the bookworms), I generally borrow audio books from the library that I already have in some other form at home.
Eventually, I started to run out of audio books to borrow from Glenview. Which is not to criticize the size of the collection, I really am trying to clear out the TBR pile and sticking to that list of books. So I started checking them out from Northbrook’s library. It felt like cheating on Glenview, but you gotta love the reciprocity. The Glenview Library’s website even has the online record of audio books I have checked out from Northbrook, so I receive the same reminder e-mail when they are due.
One day, when I went online to renew a book, I saw a link that says, “Suggest an item for the Library to purchase.”
Whoa. I can ask the Library to buy a book just so I can borrow it?! Sign me up.
I blindly looked at my bookcase and submitted some titles, requesting audio format. Within a couple of days, I received an e-mail from a librarian saying that none of my requests were available in CD audio, but a neighboring library had one of them in cassette form. She asked if she could reserve it for me. I wasn’t interested, but really happy that the response was so quick and thorough.
I tried again, this time checking Amazon.com to see if a CD audio version existed before putting in the request. (Note: I realize that Amazon.com is not the all-knowing resource, but it is easy and helped me to refine my request list a bit.) This time, it took a bit longer for a response. But when it came:
Three of the four books I named are being ordered!
The website is careful to remind us that not every request can be honored. As in my case, sometimes things just aren’t available. And of course, we know there is a limited budget. But this just made my day.
I hit “Reply” and told the librarian so.
About Her Name
Two things happened at the same time:
- I needed a name for my new dog.
- I found some gift cards in my office cabinet. My boss had given them to me thinking I could create a contest of some sort in our employee newsletter.
So I made a contest to name my dog. I posted my lame straight-from-the-Pet-Expo picture and offered a gift certificate to the person that came up with the name.
I haven’t gotten so many responses to a co-worker poll since that one about Thanksgiving Dinner. Tons. It was crazy. Since I wrote the piece myself (and I have borrowed from my blog for book reviews in this same employee newsletter) I don’t think I will be busted for copyright infringement to reprint this:
Results of the Name Anne’s New Dog Contest
I received tons of responses to the Name Anne’s New Dog Contest. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I was interested to see an overwhelming trend in suggestions: names that are also suitable for people. In my day, dogs were named, “Scruffy” and “Scamp” and “Patches” and cats were named “Fluffy” and “Spooky” and “Socks”.
The Most Votes went to “Abby”, which I had to reject because one of my girlfriends just named her baby Abby. And it wouldn’t exactly lead me out of the NCIS trend. Other multiple count suggestions were: Lola, Bella, Lady and Addie.
I also received several Scottish names, because I said she is a Border Collie mix. People – my mother sent me a website with a database of Scottish names! This was particularly funny because when I received her paperwork, it said she is a Bernese Mountain dog mix. I seem to recall someone making that suggestion from her picture.
(Truth be told it said, “Burmese Mountain Dog” but since I have never heard of such a breed, I am going to presume “Bernese” was what was intended. )
Here is a somewhat better picture. I still think she looks like a Border Collie.
She has the longer, pointier snout and weighs in the neighborhood of 40 pounds. And look at that tail!
After consultation with my nephew, Alex (age 7) we have settled on the name Fiona. It was suggested by Sarah. Thank you, Sarah. That Amazon gift certificate is on its way!
So How is Gibbs Getting Along with the New Addition?
Well. She hasn’t killed him yet:
The Next Dark Age 