The Empire Stops Here

I want to read The Empire Stops Here, based on this non-quite-a-review and because it’s about Ancient Rome.

Occasional Photo

Yes, this sign makes sense.

Occasional Photo: A Line of Lollipops

Yum!

Really, Pixar? Another Princess?

I’m glad Pixar is finally working on a movie with a girl as the title character (it’s only their thirteenth movie), but did they really have to make her a princess? She sounds like a kick-ass princess, but nonetheless: princess. We’re plenty well covered in that department, thanks.

I got myself plenty worked up about this while I was cleaning up after supper (irony!), and started listing all of the famous women I could think of who did amazing things who were neither princesses nor queens. Here are a few:

• Sacajawea, lead Lewis & Clark across the country
• Nellie Bly (she seems like a natural to make a movie of), journalist
• Amelia Earhart, aviator
• Gertrude Ederle, swam the English Channel
• Beryl Markham, aviator (if you can get your hands on a copy of Straight on Till Morning, I highly recommend it)
• Anne Morrow Lindbergh, aviator
• Sally Ride, astronaut
• Marie Curie, chemist
• Georgia O’Keeffe, painter
• Sappho, poet
• Elsa Schiapparelli, surrealist fashion designer
• Jane Goodall, primatologist
• Margaret Mead, anthropologist
• Florence Nightingale, nurse and statistician
• Julia Child, chef
• Ada Lovelace, mathemetician

(While looking up some of those links, I stumbled across a link to the Society of Women Adventurers, who last year gave a grant to a 17-year-old; she used it to climb Everest and become the youngest person to climb the highest peak on each of the 7 continents. I like these people.)

Who would you add to the list?

What Kate Is…

Reading: Nudge (which was an impulse purchase when I went looking for business law books) and Small Giants.

Listening to: When I went to Seattle a couple of weeks ago, Susan introduced me to Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head. I can’t stop listening to it. She also gave me a mix CD with the Rural Alberta Advantage, Ladyhawke, and Gaslight Anthem, all of which are also good. If you’ll excuse me, I need to go spend a lot of money now.

Watching: Not much. Some baseball. My daughter has gotten into Phineas & Ferb, and I like it too, so I’ll watch those with her sometimes. The best part is when she wants me to skip over the Hannah Montana or Jonas Brothers commercials. That makes me happy.

Busted

Busted is a book about a person — a NYTimes finance reporter — who bought a house he shouldn’t have in 2006. It was too expensive, he was recently divorced (and freshly remarried to a woman who had just declared her second bankruptcy), and he thought he could beat the market. He uses his story as a springboard to talk about the current economic debacle and he wants to use it to put a personal face on the stress that foreclosure can put on families.*

It doesn’t really work.

Busted is mostly about the generalities. His personal story is shoehorned in, supposedly enriching the whole. The two stories never mesh and as a result, neither is done well. Anyone who regularly listens to Marketplace already knows the broad strokes of what happened to the economy (though I had to keep checking dates – were mortgage brokerages really failing by August 2007? why did it take until September 2008 for the bottom to fall out?), and he never really gets into the interesting questions about the personal one. Why didn’t he and his wife talk more about their financial differences before they got married?  Why didn’t they sell the house when they could? Why didn’t they sell everything they had? Why did they take a don’t-talk-about-it attitude for so long? Why did they still have cable when they couldn’t pay their bills? He never  answers any of those questions. He keeps saying how much he loves her, but also saying how unfathomable she is to him (but that’s why her loves her! it’s the challenge!). It smacks of someone who’s gone through couples counseling who’s just realized that what he says matters.

I don’t feel like Busted made anything clearer to me, and I’m a little bit frustrated that it could have been a great cautionary tale about what financial pressures can do to a marriage. That was its hook — books about What Happened To The Economy are going to be a dime a dozen soon. Too bad it didn’t deliver.

Busted: Not Recommended

* It’s the book this article from May 2009 was exerpted from. I think the article was better pulled together than the book was.

Before Pictures

Now that it’s clear that I’ll be working from home for awhile, it’s time to turn our office from the catch-all room it currently is into a place where I really want to spend time. The sewing supplies need to be packed up, the books and CDs will be sold or donated, and it generally needs some life to it. Maybe I’ll paint the stuff on the desk; I’ll definitely put up some pictures. My husband and I might need separate desks. I say might, because I’m attempting to do this for next to no money. We’ll see what Ikea has.

I’m always a sucker for before and after stories, so here’s the current set-up, warts and all.

Dinner: Raw Tomato Sauce

It’s too hot to move and it’s tomato season. The perfect combination for pasta with raw tomato sauce. I diced some tomatoes, and mixed them in a bowl with garlic, red pepper flakes, extra virgin olive oil, and basil. Let the flavors combine till the pasta’s done, then mix that in. Basta!

What Kate Is

Reading: I’ve gotten the currently open books down to My Life in France and The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found. I’m enjoying them both.

Listening to: Taller Children by Elizabeth & the Catapult. I love the song Perfectly Perfect – I find myself humming it all the time.

Watching: We caved and added Royal Pains to the season pass list. Also BBC America finally got around to showing The Next Doctor, the first half of which was good and the second half, uh, well, wasn’t. As much as it pains me to admit that Doctor Who isn’t always superb.

Butter Cookies

Let the differences in doneness show the importance of making sure all your cookies are the same thickness.

They still taste really good with a little raspberry jam.

Occasional Photo: A Corner of My Kitchen

There’s a lot that needs updating in our house. But I do like this little corner of our kitchen where we eat. The countriness of it concerns me a little bit – I never would have pegged me as that person – but most of the stuff there has a story, which I do like. And I like that the kitchen chairs don’t match.

What Kate Is…

Reading: The Death of Adam. I’m working my way through her essay about Darwinism. Suffice it to say, I’ve got a lot of issues with it (it is useful to learn incrementally in science, dammit), but I find her point about how the emphasis on selfishness in Darwinism making it easier to ignore the poor and unsuccessful hard to refute. I need to think abut it more.

Watching: Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. I’d never seen either of them before, and the nostalgia value from Before Sunrise was *huge*. I was in college in 1995 and my backpacking trip through Europe was in 1997 — I could almost smell the mid-90s while I watched it. (Incidentally, this lead to a conversation with theCultFigurine “what did they smell like?” Unwashed flannel, hiking boots, The Barber’s Closet, the apartment in Madison I lived in for two years with six other people, that place in Paris we’d stop for food on the way back to the hostel at 3am… You were making mistakes, but they were your mistakes! Sometimes I miss being 22. )

Occasional Photo: Frack

I’m sure I’m just about the last person to post this, but: Frack from Ikea, for $9.99.

Ocassional Photo: I’m Old

Back in my day, we only got 64 colors and we liked it! Who needs these new-fangled 120 colors?

What Kate Is…

Reading: I still have far too many books in my to-read pile. The list is the same as last week: Girl With Curious Hair, Start and Run Your Own Business, The Complete Guide To Running,  Raising Less Corn, More Hell, and Whatever It Takes: Women on Women’s Sport.

Listening to: Fred Astaire’s voice is coming out of the stereo at this very moment.

Watching: Sixteen Candles was on this week! I love that movie. I also caught the beginning of Grosse Pointe Blank last night and that movie wasn’t as funny as I remember.

Lessons from the Garden: Broccoli

I hadn’t planned on growing broccoli until one of the local community gardens had a seedling sale. We stopped by for herbs; the broccoli was just a why-not addition. It’s growing like mad. Broccoli does well here.

Question of the Day: How Many Languages Are There in the World?

Over 5000, though most of those are spoken by only a few people. The Bible, or portions thereof, have been translated into over 2000 languages. English, Spanish, and Mandarin are spoken by the largest number of people. [Source, the Linguistic Society of America - pdf.]

Lessons from the Garden: Arugula

If I plant all of the arugula seeds they will all grow and flower before we can eat it all. This happened last year too. Which is why I had so many arugula seeds to plant.

Afternoon Snack

Greek yogurt, honey, and raspberries. Yum.

Question of the Day: Are Tomatillos Tomatoes?

As the mother of a five-year-old who’s never gotten over her “why?” stage, I answer a lot of questions. I’ll start to occasionally post the more interesting ones here. I’ll always cite sources and make no guarantees that the answer is complete, or even, you know, right (though I will do my best).

No, though tomatillos are related to tomatoes. And I love them and the enchiladas verdes they make possible.