Nyotaimori

the san francisco public library book sale is coming up soon. ok, it’s not for 2 months. but let’s be honest, that’s pretty soon. unfortunately, i still have piles and piles of books collected over the last year to wade through. some purchased at the sale last year. some bought elsewhere, some received from kim’s mom’s advance reader’s copies. my lack of making a dent in this collection is shameful. in the past 2 days though i’ve either read or partially read 9 of them. my technique is to read the first chapter, if it doesn’t entice, i skim the middle just to check and then read the last couple pages. at this point there’s almost no way i’m going to want to go back and read the whole thing and, honestly, it probably wasn’t worth the time anyway. ‘done!’, i cry gladly and toss the book aside to move on to the next. i managed to go through like 5 in this fashion on sunday before getting hooked on one–“the candy shop war” by brandon mull. he came to my mom’s elementary school and talked to the kids last spring and the book is set in colson, ca. a town which doesn’t exist but is set somewhere in contra costa county anyway–someone reads the contra costa times and at one point they go to visit a grandmother on sunday in walnut creek. sweet, i say, my digs are being represented.

the one i actually read cover to cover yesterday was “light of the oracle” by victoria hanley. it wasn’t bad for a YA fantasy novel.

i uploaded some more pictures from my beach trip since my mom got hers developed. and shockingly there were two pictures of me. ‘me me me,’ i say, ‘here i am.’

the second (and longer) half of my july vacation took place in rockaway beach, OR with the fam. every time i share this information my head starts singing,

Rock a bye baby on the tree top

When the wind blows

The cradle will rock

When the bow breaks

The cradle will fall

But I will save baby

Cradle and all

this was almost distressing as the shortcut via national parks i took to get to the beach from medford. though a lot less pretty, i suppose. shel silverstein has it correctly when he says:

Rockabye Baby, in the treetop

Don’t you know a treetop

is no safe place to rock?

And who put you up there,

and your cradle too?

Baby, I think someone down here

has got it in for you!

rockaway really had nothing to do with treetops or babies. toddlers, yes, babies, no.

we were there from sunday to saturday which is a really long time at the beach. i’m not complaining, because it was awesome and my lovely friends nuala and kristen took turns playing with my kittens to appease my fear at leaving them alone. still though, 6 nights. looooong. i read sooo many books. i took an entire paper bag up with me and read all but 2 of them. plus i bought several more and read 1 of those so far (‘lucinda, darkly‘ by sunny.) and i’m almost done with verne’s ‘journey to the center of the earth‘ [$1.75!] which i’m pretty sure has no relevance to ‘journey to the center of the earth 3D‘. i’m seeing it in all its 3D glory tonight anyway. so excited.

we took turns cooking too which gave us the chance to sample others’ culinary skills. i made curried crab nests and nectarine galette on the night my mom and i made dinner. she made everything else (flaky phyllo halibut, corn on the cob, and apple-cranberry salad.) sure there was a disproportionate amount of cooking on her side compared to mine. but my appetizer and dessert were a smashing success!

there was delicious trips to the tillamook cheese factory where i had fresh ice cream, cheese samples, and fudge. and we went to astoria and cannon beach both of which i love. there was kite flying and dam building and hot-tubbing. it was an excellent vacation with some of my favorite relatives (i wish adam, erin, and evan could have come too. and my uncles dick and dave and their fams were supposed to come but didn’t end up making it. still we had the mary fam and the peter excellence so it was pretty sweet.)

rest of the pictures here.

i might have missed miss texas falling down at miss universe this year, but i had an excellent vacation last week in ashland with the peeps and at the beach with my relatives.

my first experience with erica, sophia, marina, jason, jolie, jacob, and lisa occured in talent, OR next to ashland. we went up and saw plays (further racist/homophobic adventures of hedda gabbler and the clay cart) at the ashland shakespeare festival and stayed in a rental house out in the woods. the house was awesome and HUGE. we had hot tub good times, margarita good times, and BBQ good times with a random frenchman (friend of jacob’s from work, not really so random).

possibly my favorite times of the weekend were just hanging out and chatting shit up. erica, jason, and i co-authored a book the first night after everyone went to sleep with the tagline: “you otter know her”. it was a YA book about a girl working at the monterey bay aquarium with the otters. she falls in the water one day and is rescued by a hot boy from her school. they end up going to prom together and then having an after party at the aquarium with more friends. they get caught and she gets fired. eventually though of course an otter gets sick and only she can help him so they ask her back and everyone lives happily ever after.

the second night marina and i stayed up way too late in our room laying down the smack. always one of my favorite activities. 🙂

so here are the pictures i took from the weekend.

when my mom was younger she had a series of black cats that she named styx (for the river styx, black as the devil’s soul), so when i adopted one of my former foster kittens (who is all black) i wanted to name him styx too. but since i’m me i had to add something weird to it. so fish styx is his name-o.

i’ve gotten yelled at by multiple people now, so here are some photos:

here’s another one and one more.

oh my god!

i had to baby-sit this weekend as all my family went to see ‘the fall‘. this is the first time i’ve baby-sat on my own for evan and it was…well, it wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t very good either.

i’ve discovered that when faced with a baby and while utterly alone i don’t talk very much. babies need talking. i think sounds reassure them. but i feel stupid talking to a baby by myself. if i ever had kids (after baby-sitting i’m really not interested) and i never talked to them while they were babies would that affect their development? do babies make noise in reaction to people talking to them/making noise at them? evan kept crying and being distressed by my silent face. but i think he enjoyed the mashed carrots, the bottles and all the ‘sex in the city’ we watched.

in other news:

one of my foster kittens might have ringworm.

season 6 of 7th heaven came out this week and it is way funnier than the other seasons–so far (i am obsessed).

roller skating is much, much harder than i remember but hanging out with nachos and icees is pretty great.

“From the autumn, book covers will bear a sign stating they are intended for readers aged 5+, 7+, 9+, 11+ and 13+/teen.”

“I have had letters from children of seven who say they have read all the way through His Dark Materials and they have an astonishing knowledge of it. But not every child is the same. A child of nine might be tentative and unsure about reading, and to give them a book that says 9+ will reinforce their sense of failure. The book should be suited to the individual child.”

–(quote from Philip Pullman)

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