who wouldn't be charmed?

Oh my goodness (again)! You must go over to this blog and read this right this instant. If you are not immediately charmed by this then you must have a very cold and dark heart indeed. And yes, I will pray for yoru soul.

(I believe the children's ages are 6, 4 and 2.) What a great birthday!

sweet valley high forever

Oh my goodness, I can't believe I just read this. I am amused by the timing in light of my recent confessions as a young reader...

Photo from Apartment Therapy LA

And I have to admit that something about this appeals to me to. If I only had a little corner of my home where I could display this kind of kitsch. Then again, I can't imagine this would go over favorably with m. Not macho enough.

mum socks

Happy birthday to my lovely mother in law!




Photos are pre-laundering, so that the gift reaches the birthday girl clean. (Also evened out the colors between the two. Whew!)


Here's what they look like if you had scanner-like vision:



I called her up and am happy to report that birthday girl sounds like she is having a good day.

two down

I am totally cruising through my book list.



I can now check Hilma Wolitzer's Summer Reading off the list. And thank goodness. I won't even bother with including NPR's review of the book here because I found it to be utterly inaccurate and I wouldn't want to mislead you. (I mean, I respect NPR's journalists. And this lady works for Terry Gross for crying out loud.) There is nothing clever or witty or brazen about this book at all. It was a short read of total fluff, kind of like a literary soap opera where the lives of the characters are supposed to have some kind of clever parallel to the literature referenced in the book itself. Clever my ass.

The story is told through the points of view of three characters whose lives intermingle during a summer in the Hamptons. Angela is a retired literature professor who is haunted by memories of an affair from her youth, Lyssa is a poor little rich girl socialite whose worst dilemmas waver between trying to (barf barf) find herself and wondering which h'ors d'oevres to have her housekeeper serve and Michelle the housekeeper from the poor side of town who is the most interesting of the three, but I honestly can't tell you what she learns during the book. I can't tell you what any of them learned, their stories end satisfactorily with everyone getting married or being reuinited or finding new love, blah, blah, blah.

About halfway through the book, I thought to myself: I have no idea what the big conflict will be for each character to struggle through and learn from, wondering how the writer was going to wrap it up quick so that we could hit the lows of each story in preparation for the epiphany of the character arcs at the end. Or even provide some sort of lesson to the reader by way of a cautionary tale. Perhaps my expectations were a little too much. When the book drew to a close, I could feel the writer scrambling hastily for some sort of conclusion to the mess so that the three women's stories came together at the end a little too pat, a little too convenient.

What I learned is that this book sucks. A quick harmless read with not much substance throughout.

work that skirt

I am terribly fond of skirts. Story goes that when I was a tot they couldn't find trousers to fit around my chubby tummy so I was often garbed in dresses and skirts. I have no idea how this makes sense, but I am just repeating what I was told.

When I was old enough to read, my favorites books featured young ladies from another time who were courageous and brazen with bustling skirts swirling around them as they kept house, hunted deer or even climbed trees. I loved that Jo March had pockets in the skirts of her dresses that she sometimes kept a book or candy in. I used try and slip paperbacks into my skirts with pockets. Not a good look as these skirt pockets weren't really made to house Louisa May Alcott tomes. And the weight of the books sometimes tugged the elastic waist a little too far south for modesty's comfort. Ahem.

But enough with my Proustian mumble bumble. Check out these lovely skirts from the Skirt Spot:

Aren't they the prettiest?? I actually think that these are not as cute as some of the ones they've featured in past seasons, back when they were still called Boutique Ooh La La.

the saltmines

Jenn had posted some photos of her work space which I enjoyed perusing. So I thought: Me too! I want to play! So here are some photos from my work:

This is my office when you walk in (please note that considering my hierarchical status in my large corporation, I have a ridiculously large office. It's a fluke. It bears no weight on my importance at my job.)


This is the view from where I sit left to right. Note the door at the far left, that's where I was standing to take the photo above.

(Note to self: Put those shelves up or away.)




And this is the giant bulletin board behind me filled with useful stuff for my job. With a little fun stuff tucked into the corner. Hard to tell from these photos, but that wall color is best described as periwinkle. It's quite pretty actually, but I have negative associations with it, so I am probably going to have it painted over.


Here's the corner of the reception area desk (looking into our conference room) I just had to photograph this because of the floral arrangement. We have an AWESOME florist. His name is Nelson and his place is called Floral Rush. Every week he delivers some amazing piece of floral art for our lobby downstairs and a beautiful vase for the reception area of my office. Every week we get asked: Who is your florist?? He's got quite the pedigreed client list (Academy Awards receptions, Louis Vuitton, Golden Globe receptions, and yours truly). And on top of that, a sweeter guy you couldn't find to work with. What a consummate professional.

Seriously. My camera is not doing justice to this arrangement. If you could only see the glowing embers of the cockscomb. Pinks and yellows and oranges. It's awesome.

Speaking of awesome, this is my assistant Leigh (pronounced: Lee-ah).

Isn't she a cutie? Today is her birthday. Kiddo is a mere 27. On top of being cute and totally awesome, she's a go-getter. Keeps those shades nearby, hon. Your future is bright indeed.

The prettiest little cake from a bakery in my neighborhood:

The nice gals there helped me concoct a cake that comes closest to a german chocolate cake without nuts (Leigh's allergic) without changing their recipe (a susiecakes policy). Chocolate cake with coconut buttercream. I bought a jar of caramel sauce to dabble on the side.

The serious looking dude back there is Antonio. It's really weird that I caught him looking so straight-faced. Not normal for him. He's a total pal and so fun to work with.


This awesome lady is LaJuana who was really getting into singing Happy Birthday. Yes there was clapping and swaying involved. And an encore.


And there are three other fellows in my office that aren't pictured here cause my camera stinks and the photos were too blurry to bother posting.

for janecita

Aren't these the cutest?

I have a thing about red shoes it seems. I own quite a few pair. And mary janes. I always have a pair or two of mary janes in my closet.

This is the best part about these shoes (the part that makes me think of janet):

Photos from Ysolda.

camping

I miss camping. I'm not the most agile camper, but I think I held my own okay for a city girl back when we used to go camping, like all the time.

Funny thing, m and I were just talking about camping this weekend. A little car camping up the coast is perhaps in our future. I was able to gloss over the sleeping on the ground part with promises of hiking and grilling. You can convince the man of nearly anything if it's accompanied by a good meal. To be fair, m's been camping before, slept on the ground even while a storm passed over us. In Maine. Maybe when the weather gets a little cooler. I prefer cool weather camping to hot weather camping.

Anyways, you must read this fantastic camping story as told by my favorite Canadian knitter. There is danger and peril just around the bend, pretty photos of nature, the fanciest loo in the wild and a loss-with-quick recovery involving something called a DPN*. Surely not to be missed!

* double pointed needle. Used primarily to knit socks, but also makes a handy cherry pitter and can jimmy a locked bathroom door open.

one down

Oh, the weekend... It was oppressively hot. So much so that I actually dreaded the additional day we had off. At least at the office, I have AC. But I did manage to get some reading in...

Of the many books I picked up from the library last week, I started with the ones that were due first. So I gave Then We Came To An End a go. Here's what the NPR's recommendation said about the book:

Joshua Ferris' Then We Came to the End is one of those novels that slowly grew on me. I enjoyed it right from the beginning, but it wasn't until I turned over the last page that I was struck by just how good this first novel really is. The story begins as the economic boom of the 1990s is beginning to head south. The writers and designers in a rapidly failing Chicago ad agency are just waking up to the reality of a world marked first by austerity measures (no flowers in the lobby), and then layoffs and firings, which are known in the agency's parlance as "Walking Spanish down the hall," a reference to pirates' treatment of their prisoners (and a Tom Waits song). Told in the first person plural (the "we" voice is my favorite narrative style when it's done well, as it is here), Ferris' novel is about work and identity — the extent to which we define ourselves by how we make a living — and how people behave (often badly)in the face of change, particularly change for the worse.

There are the rumors flying, the infighting, the paranoia, and the incessant gossip around the water cooler about who's in and who's out, who's doing what to whom, who's going crazy, who's brought a gun to work, who's still showing up at the office (even though he was fired weeks ago), whose marriage won't make it through the downturn, not to mention the endless pettiness. One unforgettable series of scenes involves the machinations the characters go through in order to capture a particularly coveted chair that belonged to one of the first people fired. But Ferris goes beyond the work, exploring how people cope with change. In one very moving section (for which he switches to the third person), he writes with compassion about the ramifications of one character's bout with breast cancer, leavening the inherent oppressiveness of the situation with humor. Reading Then We Came to the End made me feel good about the state of contemporary fiction.

I think I related a little too well to this book. Though it takes place in the creative department of an advertising corporation, a lot of the quirks of office life were quite familiar to my none too creative corporate past. The annoying co-workers, the whiney cubicle-mates, the seemingly larger-than-life boss, the office gossip, etc. It seems that no matter what kind of work you do (benefits consulting, international education, commercial real estate or corporate advertising) these elements exist everywhere. You just can't escape it.

And I think that what I could relate to is also what got to me. At times the book felt like such a downer that my already low-enthusiasm to show up at the office took a deeper dive south. Worse yet, I'd brought it all home with me when home is where I try to escape all of this nonsense. (Tougher yet when your spouse works for the same company.) In small moments to myself, without half realizing it, I'd get bummed out thinking about the cynicism that can make work feel like such a burden. But that's my own personal hang up man, and I can't let Joshua Ferris take credit (or blame) for that.

And I couldn't really get into the dark humor as the writer dealt with the subjects of cancer, death, abortion and workplace violence. Yeah. I know. I'm such a party pooper. However, every time I was ready to dismiss this book as being too dark or too painful a reminder of my professional obligations there would be a story or a chapter that redeemed it all. I think that it's this kind of skillful use of hope (and not in a cheesy or preachy way) that the reader discovers among the gloomy stories of gossip slung at the water cooler is what ultimately made this book enjoyable for me.