Slanted

MBC is Getting Married FAQ

2009-12-18T16:21:00.007-07:00

As requested, here are the pertinent facts of MBC and Steve.

Q: How did you meet?
A: When I was traveling in Scotland, I visited Sue Anne, who was also a grad student in Bloomington. Steve and Sue Anne are friends and when we arrived at Sue Anne's house, Steve was there hanging out. He went out with all of us that night and at one point, I heard him say something about building with straw bale insulation, which, naturally caught me up short and made me think, "Wait. Who are you? And why are you talking about something I care about that no other man I have ever known has taken an interest in?" I spent that night and the next day having lots of really interesting conversations with Steve, and he came down to visit me in Edinburgh one night before I left for Greece a few days later. I then proceeded to be the worst travel companion in history, because I was always more interested in my next email from Steve than I was in ancient Greek ruins or Turkish food (I know!) or anything in Europe. I went back to Scotland to visit him at the end of my trip and then Skype became our best friend when I returned to the States.

Q: Is Steve Scottish?
A: No, he's Canadian but he's been living in Scotland for the last several years.

Q: What does Steve do?
A: Everything. Currently, he's working on a PhD. Before moving to Scotland, he worked as an engineer.

Q: Do you have a ring?
A: No. I told Steve I didn't want one. That's the way I roll. I'd rather spend that money on, say, a pair of wellies and a trip to the Orkneys or Italy.

Q: Where are you going to live?
A: Scotland for the foreseeable future.

Q: When did you know he was a keeper?
A: He sent me an email explaining functional clarity through the example of a chocolate croissant (its function, according to Steve, is tastiness). Oh, and maybe too when he sent me terrible McGonagall poetry. But I already thought he was fantastic because of many things, including: he's so smart and he keeps up with (or ahead) of me in conversations, he's interested in everything and he can do everything, he's so, so nice and thoughtful, he tells great stories (when I wake up and hear Mom laughing in the kitchen, I know that Steve is already up and talking to her). I could go on, but I don't want to make anyone gag any more than they already are. He did demonstrate another skill tonight, though, which I consider essential in a spouse--he can kill cave crickets. And you know how I feel about those.

Everybody satisfied? Any more questions?

And This Post is About Steve Too

2009-12-17T16:59:00.002-07:00

And many more will be as well, because we're getting married!

Finally, a Tree

2009-12-16T19:40:00.006-07:00

Today we baked the first batch of holiday spritz cookies of the season. Aren't they pretty?

When we were kids, we always wanted to make the camel spritz cookie and it never worked out. Cookies made with this disk always looked like blobs. Today they also looked like blobs. We'll feed them to the missionaries tomorrow night when they come to dinner.
MBC: I look crazy in this picture.
Steve: Crazy about camels.

Festive.

And we finally cut down and decorated a tree today. It smells Christmasy.

the one about Steve

2009-12-13T22:31:00.003-07:00

1. Steve is here (hooray!) for the holidays.
2. I prevailed in convincing my father that I am old enough and capable enough to pick up Steve at the airport without assistance.

Dad: (For the 85 millionth time) Do you know the route I take to the airport?
MBC: Yes. You take the Parkway.
Dad: And how do I get to the Parkway?
MBC: You take the Pike (except I didn't say Pike because no one calls it that except for Marmot Dad and actually I laughed really hard before providing this answer, because I have driven on that parkway a million billion times, so it was really such a worried father kind of question).
Dad: It's supposed to rain. I'm a really good driver in the rain.

3. Steve read a quote in Sunday School today. He has a really lovely voice and a great accent and after he read his quote, the teacher stopped and said, "Wow. Okay, I think we should have him read all the quotes, because that was awesome!"
4. Tomorrow we're going to get a Christmas tree and the Christmas season will officially commence.

Why I am a Bad Patient

2009-12-09T20:07:00.003-07:00

I went to the doctor today. I don't like going to the doctor. I spend the days leading up to the appointment worried that I don't have enough symptoms and thinking, "Maybe I should cancel. I'm fine. I feel fine." Then I spend my time in the waiting room developing symptoms completely unrelated to my condition and thinking, "My face feels warm. Maybe I have a fever. Is that a chest pain? I think I just had a chest pain." By the time the nurse comes to get me, I'm lying flat on the floor bequeathing the contents of my purse to the geriatric patients waiting with me.

And have I mentioned how I hate health insurance companies? I do.

Why I am a Bad Blogger

2009-12-08T20:16:00.003-07:00

All of my current activities (except for constantly complaining about health insurance and eating all of the cinnamon bread in the house) are TOP SECRET Christmas activities, so I have nothing to report.

NYC One More Time

2009-12-07T14:48:00.006-07:00

I'm back in Tennessee, but I forgot to post this picture from NY while I was there.

This is the window display for the Build-a-Bear workshop in Manhattan. I'm sure those little bears are supposed to be placing a loving heart into a teddy bear for some precious child to take home, but it looks to me like they're doing a little bit of organ harvesting.

Mission Accomplished

2009-12-02T18:40:00.004-07:00

Today's Mission: Experience Christmas Cheer in the City

First, I visited the Shake Shack for a Shackburger and festive pumpkin pie concrete. If you ever talk to anyone in New York City about the Shake Shack, they inevitably mention the line. Apparently, the line at the Shake Shack is typically very long. I, however, arrived at exactly the perfect time (11:14 am). There were people sitting at some of the tables, but no one was in line when I came and ordered. It was such a beautiful day in Madison Square Park.

After my burger brunch, I headed up 5th Avenue to see the Christmas window displays at Macy's, Lord & Taylor, and Saks. The Salvation Army ringers outside of Lord & Taylor are straight up geniuses. They were singing Christmas carols, which provoked the desired result. I gave them all my quarters and I would have picked someone's pocket and given away all the cash I attained there as well, but my petty thieving skills are not what they should be. I am no match for Christmas windows AND carols.

from one of the Macy's windows

On my way up 5th Avenue, I stopped at the New York Public Library to the see the map exhibit and to consider what a beautiful building it is and that I love Christmas trees in libraries.

And then I visited Rockefeller Center, where the Rockefeller Center Christmas special was being filmed for tonight's tree lighting ceremony.

And then I came home and watched most of Joyeux Noel (but not all of it, because war makes me bored).

And then I was full of holiday cheer.

photos from Wikipedia and http://www.inform.com/photo/1956363

Educating Canadians

2009-12-01T19:03:00.003-07:00

I was talking to Steve today about the health care bill and about Schoolhouse Rock (which is how Canadians figure out how American health care bills become laws). Schoolhouse Rock is fantastic and I love it, but do you remember these educational TV spots? They were excellent brainwashing tools. I still sometimes find myself singing about hankering for a hunk of cheese.

I Would Like a Marmot in the City

2009-11-30T20:31:00.000-07:00

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

2009-11-29T21:09:00.005-07:00

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!

2009-11-25T19:17:00.003-07:00

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 . . .

2009-11-24T20:31:00.000-07:00

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

2009-11-23T22:30:00.000-07:00

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

2009-11-22T12:22:00.006-07:00

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

2009-11-18T14:31:00.003-07:00

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

2009-11-17T17:45:00.003-07:00

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

2009-11-15T17:11:00.009-07:00

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.

Dinner Party List

2008-01-21T19:24:00.003-07:00

Last night we had a mermaid drawing contest at the Marmot House. This is Madame 3-yr-old's entry. My sister did the basic mermaid, octopus, and starfish outlines. Madame filled them in and made some additions, including "101 bubbles."

The girls are currently in a gift giving phase, which is how I ended up with this artwork. Every time I visit, they slip broken plaster hearts and paper dolls and princess drawings into my pockets.

Sometimes they also meet me at the door and, without taking a breath for five straight minutes, tell me everything they've learned since I last saw them, sing me a song, and tell me all about the fascinating clothes they're wearing. Yesterday they showed me the "shells" my sister had fashioned for them out of diaper liners and ribbons, so they could be mermaids. They LOVE mermaids.

Madame 3-yr-old told me recently that she'd like to invite a mermaid to dinner. The logistics on that one seem awkward to me, so no mermaids made it onto my dinner party list. These lovely people are included on my imaginary dinner party list, though:

Kermit the Frog - Does anyone NOT want to meet Kermit the Frog? He's so nice. And I like his little legs.

Haven Kimmel - I'd have to really work hard not to mention every 2 minutes that I love A Girl Named Zippy.

Haven: Could you please pass the pie?

MBC: I just love A Girl Named Zippy.

Haven: And could I have some more milk?

MBC: Especially the part about the Shriners and the bike. I love that part. I tried to read it out loud when I was booktalking at a library event, but I couldn't because I started laughing too hard.

Haven: I think Kermit the Frog is choking on his dessert!

MBC: Man, that's one good book you wrote.

The Raven Master at the Tower of London - He led the tour of the Tower I took with the Supreme Coordinatrix last year and was VERY amusing. I still have a lot of questions I didn't ask, though. Starting with those Royal Guard hats. What's the deal with those? Why so tall?

Laurie Colwin - It would be especially nice if she brought a pan of her gingerbread with her.

Sometimes I am Amused

2009-11-13T16:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-11-11T18:51:00.002-07:00

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

2009-11-09T16:39:00.002-07:00

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

2009-11-08T19:26:00.003-07:00

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

2009-11-05T17:39:00.003-07:00

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

2009-11-04T15:48:00.002-07:00

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.'