I Would Like a Marmot in the City

I miss the marmots (and not just because they provide so much blog fodder). At the moment, I most miss

1. Coming to the dinner table and being told by Tuey that I will be eating "applesauce made byyy the Tuey."

2. Seeing Marmot Babe tap his open palm with the index finger of his other hand, one of his self-styled signs. Translation: Put a treat right here in my hand.

sometimes I don't know what to blog about

1. Sometimes there's a man at the subway station dressed in a long fur coat and a matching hat and sunglasses. Sometimes his coat is red with zebra stripes and sometimes his coat is white with zebra stripes.

2. The Coordinatrix and I are not good at locating restaurants in the city even when we have an address and Chou's book of maps.

3. It takes me at least a week to read the weekend edition of The New York Times.

4. Every time I meet someone new, they ask me where I'm from and I don't know what to say. When my brother was here and we went out with his friends, he just told them that I'm homeless. That may be the best explanation.

5. I'm going to try to make winter squash tortellini this week.

6. And I want to see the Tim Burton exhibit at the MoMA.

7. The trash gets picked up very late here. The garbage men are outside right now and it's 11:17 pm.

8. Yaki soba noodles are tasty.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Coordinatrix is here visiting from North Carolina for the holiday. She is a good friend. She drove 12 hours to get here and she didn't kill me this evening when I got grouchy (I must be fed regularly or I will start kicking and biting people in the subway, especially if there are holiday crowds).

Tonight we went uptown to see the giant balloons being inflated for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I like the old-school balloons best--the fireman and pirate--but I was also excited about Snoopy and Kermit the Frog and the Pillsbury Dough Boy. I even managed to take pictures with my cell phone (camera is still in Scotland) but I have no idea how to get them from the phone to a useful place like my computer.

Tomorrow: stay in, watch A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, eat lovely foods, be grateful that I'm not braving the NYC crowds

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like . . .

Yesterday Chou and I were in town (almost getting ripped off when purchasing treats at an Indian bakery but not getting ripped off because Chou can do basic math AND confront people about cover charges--what is this, Italy?!) and I saw that Christmas lights are going up! Christmas lights and giant bows and festive wreaths in Manhattan. I took it as a sign that I should start listening to the John Denver and the Muppets Christmas record that I found in my brother's vinyl collection. Come faster, Christmas!

These are Muppets.



These are not.


p.s. My brother lives next door to a church and they have been singing up a storm since Friday night. They're currently singing "In the Sweet By and By." It's lovely.

No Littering

This has always been my favorite subway sign. Every time I see it I think, "Please don't make it snow on the subway."

Treat du Jour

I have found a new, delightful treat (which is fortunate because I ate almost all the chocolate out of my brother's freezer and then replaced it and then ate the replacement chocolate and then decided that chocolate should not be brought back into the house until, probably, the night before my brother and his wife come home). So . . . persimmons! Chou and I both bought some on our last adventure. They are perfect, being cheap, pretty, and delicious. I've been eating mine with fresh mozzarella, but persimmons have a certain similarity to melons, so I'm thinking they would be even more fantastic with prosciutto. I need to find out where I can get prosciutto in my neighborhood. Last time I investigated the meat selection at the little shop I normally frequent, they only had bacon, chicken sausage, octopus chunks, and tofu dogs. A persimmon and octopus treat just doesn't have the same appeal.

Field Trip

Chou and I visited Brighton Beach today (via the Coney Island boardwalk) to hang out with the Russians. It's been ten years since I've really used my Russian, so I could only understand about a quarter of the written Russian I encountered and I could only understand very small snatches of the spoken Russian, but I still pulled out my rusty skills so I could tell Chou helpful things like, "That is a pharmacy. These are yucky cookies. Those are filled with cabbage." Occasionally I would see a word and suddenly realize that I knew it and in my head I would yell, "Shoes! Shoes! Shoes!" I felt like Marmot Babe. Right before I left Utah, Marmot Babe was very busy acquiring language and repeated everything we said to him. One day my sister handed him his lunch and told him what it was and then Marmot Babe crowed, "Hot dog! Hot dog! Hot dog!" until someone gave him a new word to yell. I even (badly) ordered our lunch for us in Russian (with a little bit of English and a lot of pointing). We shared a potato piroshki and a meat-filled something or other (that's where most of the pointing came in) and poppy seed-filled bread (that's where some English came in - with poppy seeds=s myakom, yes? maybe not). It was lovely. And I didn't even give in to the temptation to buy priyaniki.

Crying Gets the Sad Out

Steve told me about this video from Free to Be . . . You and Me, an album and TV special from the early 1970s that challenges gender stereotypes. It's pretty fantastic, especially the line, "Crying gets the sad out" (oh, and Rosey Grier's giant glasses). I have a little bit of sad to get out myself, since I ate all my beetroot, coconut, and lime soup. Oh, I miss it. Must make more.

Food, Glorious Food

If you come to New York, try to get yourself a Chou who knows all about food, so you can regularly eat delicious meals (for cheap!).

This weekend we ate at Vanessa's Dumpling House (staffed entirely by women). I ordered a sesame pancake with vegetables and offered to share it with Chou. She said she'd help me finish if I ran out of steam. She did not get any sesame pancake. It was too delicious. I ate it all up and then I ate two of her dumplings.

And there were the steamed pork buns.
And the Thai sandwiches.
And the lemon pudding I think they serve in heaven.

Yes, try to get yourself a Chou.

Sometimes I am Amused

Steve emailed me this conversation he had with some of his engineering club students, and I think it's very amusing and blog-worthy. I even asked permission before posting it, although Steve sent it to me when I was in Wales and the Internet came to me through the large-screen TV, making all the email I received public, and sometimes when I'd check my email, Kirsten would sit down next to me on the couch, and I'd say, "So, you gonna sit here and read my email now?" and she'd say, "It's from your mom" and then I'd say, "Yeah, but then I'm going to read the one from Steve" and then she'd say, "Yeah, so?" and then I learned to check my email at night after she and Stash went to bed (because you never know what kind of scandalous information Mom might send me).

I added the bold, but otherwise the following text is as Steve sent it to me, so Me=Steve and Them=Scottish Students.

Me: Hey... guess what, I've arranged for us to enter the UK-wide agricultural engineering challenge this year, down in England. We just need to fund raise some cash to pay for transport. We'll be building a robot!

Them: Oh cool, what kind of robot, like the ones in Robot Wars that battle each other?

Me: No... umm, more like an... agricultural robot. They send us a motor and some wheels and we design and build the rest to perform the task they give us.

Them: Right, that's great, what's the task?

Me: Going up a hill pulling a block of wood.

Them: Like in a field over rough terrain?

Me: No, ah, well, actually it's a model of a hill. I think it's made of plywood.

Them: Right, but when we're done we can repurpose the robot to do something cool and run it around campus?

Me: Umm, actually they ask for the wheels and motor back.

Them: . . .

Me: But we'll get a guided tour of an axle factor!

Them: Actually that does sound cool, let's have our first meeting on Thursday night!

Funny, right?

What I Like

I like

1. My friend Chou
2. Hot chocolate and homemade marshmallows from the City Bakery
3. Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge
4. Chocolate croissants

The combination of the four made for a very lovely day today.

Please Recommend

When I was still working in a public library, I read seven professional review journals every month, so I always knew what was happening in the world of publishing and I always had 30-40 books on hold and a good stack of reading material at the side of my bed. Now, I'm cut off. I'm perfectly aware of all the free review sites and recommendation sources available to the general public, but I really miss those review journals. My brother's leaving me his library card and the public library is just two blocks away, so I'm going to pay a visit there tomorrow. I have a short list of books I want to read

the new Barbara Kingsolver
the new Jeanette Walls
the new Anna Godbersen
the new Freakonomics
The Help by Stockett
The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Larsen

but I need more recommendations. Marmot Dad believes in backups, mostly (it seems) backup pants. I believe in backup book lists. I feel nervous if I don't have a long list of books to read. Tell me what you recommend. Please.

Safe Arrival

1. I am at my brother's.
2. I have been given the tour of the neighborhood and seen the old bank building with the sad hound dog carving.
3. I have been given instructions on how to use the entertainment system (say it with me: the entire series of Arrested Development on DVD).
4. I have been given instructions on how to learn about happenings in New York City.
5. I have been given instructions on what to order and where at the Shake Shack.
6. I haven been given instructions not to burn down the building.
7. I have been given instructions on where I am not allowed to go.

MBC's month of Girl in the Big City commences . . . now.

Walk This Way, Part Two

In the spring, I posted about taking walks with my sister. I also take walks with my mother and they are equally special. I can't find my tennis shoes, so today I borrowed Mom's. She has two pairs that are exactly the same, so we matched. I always think Mother-Daughter wardrobe matching is a poor idea once the daughter is over the age of, say, 8. (Wearing identical shoes is much preferable to wearing identical bathing suits, though, which is what my sister and I have done the last couple of years. We haul all my sister's kids to the pool and we wear our matching suits and we look just like polygamous wives as we both call out warnings and praise to the children.)

So Mom and I were matching and we were walking up a hill, when Mom suddenly said, "How would you like to pull me up this hill?" (she has a cold, so she's not at her walking best). I didn't pull her, but I put my hand on her back and I pushed her up the hill. When we approached the top of the hill, I took my hand away and Mom stopped walking and slumped over at the waist.

MBC: Oh, you're naughty!
Mom: I'm not naughty. I'm just old.

Fair enough. I pushed her to the top of the hill and then she walked very nicely like a human being (until we reached the next hill). And now I'm going to go eat her chocolate. She's going to be glad when I leave on Saturday, don't you think?

Advice from the Unemployed

When you make a to-do list and it's full of things you don't actually want to do, like calling Utah Retirement Systems about rolling your 401k into your IRA and registering your car in a new state, you should always add something pleasant to your list. Like 'Find Mom's hidden stash of Dove dark chocolate and eat half the bag.'

My Mother is Full of Surprises

One night last week after my sister's kids had been put to bed, my mom, my sister, and I were up talking (and busting out the treats, which I always KNEW happened after I went to bed as a child). My sister was saying how it would have been impossible for her to marry someone whose favorite movie was something like Legally Blonde.

MBC: Yeah, well, you have to cut people slack on things like that, though, because we all have our guilty media pleasures. Like, you know, maybe some of us find ourselves unexpectedly fond of, you know, maybe, The O.C.

Mom: That's right. Or Judge Judy.

MBC and Sister: the sound of heads whipping around to stare

MBC: You watch Judge Judy?

Sister: You like Judge Judy?

Mom: I want to be Judge Judy.

MBC and Sister: open-mouthed staring

Mom: Yep, Judge Judy just lays down the law. Tells it like it is. Sets everybody straight.

Wow. True confession.

Road Trip

Mom and I finally started our cross-country road trip to take most of my belongings (except for all the stuff that wouldn't fit in the car and is still sitting in my long-suffering friend's basement in Utah) to Tennessee. It's a lovely road trip. My ever-lovin' mother is a great travel companion. She thinks of good songs to sing and she changes the CDs and this morning she spent 20 minutes holding a map up against the windshield to block the rising sun in Kansas so it wouldn't blind me while I drove. Here are a few things I would change about this road trip if I had it to plan over again, though.

Good Change:
I would remember to pull out all the good road trip CDs before packing the car. They're in the trunk somewhere. John Denver. I need John Denver.

Even Better Change:
I would go back to 2003 and purchase a car with cruise control. My knee just about broke in Kansas.

Best Change:
I would ask my parents to drive the car to Tennessee back in July when they came to visit before I went to Europe. I could have completely avoided three days of driving in the wake of a giant winter storm. Not that I don't love spending Halloween in a wacky inn in Strassburg, Colorado conveniently located within feet of the train tracks.