More on books

Tomorrow's New York Times Sunday Books Review is all about books people might be considering for summer reading. It's geared toward Manhattanites who will be spending their vacations on the beach in the Hamptons, but some of the books look good.
Plus, the section on Comics is by John Hodgman, who is hilarious. (He's the guy who plays the PC in Apple's Buy a Mac commercials, and he's also written a book called The Areas of My Expertise that has made me laugh out loud more times than I can count.)

Belated Memorial Day post

On Memorial Day, I meant to scan in photos of my grandfather -- who was a U.S. Navy pilot during World War II and died in 1996 -- but I never had a chance to find the photos. (And whether I could get the scanner to work remains a mystery.)
So instead, days later, I'm going to mention my great-granduncle, who died in France during World War I. Oct. 15, 1918, to be exact. Essley O. Cabaniss was my great-great-grandparents' youngest child, and he was 23 years old when he died. He has a tombstone in the cemetery at Zion Baptist Church in Shelby, N.C., where many of my relatives are buried. But I know he's not buried there.
I've done a lot of online research over the past few years trying to figure out exactly where he's buried. Even if I can't find his grave, I'd like to visit the American cemeteries in France, such as the one at Bony (pictured above).
So a belated thanks to those who have gone before us, military and otherwise. I hope we can learn more from -- and about -- them.

Books, books everywhere

It's quite obvious to anyone who's read this blog consistently that I read a lot. I don't post about all of the books I read -- it's usually chick lit that doesn't get a mention -- but I'm almost always in the middle of something. That's even more true now that we live overseas and I only work part time.
Awhile back, Kevin got me started on Martin Cruz Smith. Only the Arkady Renko mysteries, but it's still a few books -- and I'm not finished with them. Although I've liked all of the ones I've read, I thought Havana Bay was an interesting portrayal of Cuba, although Wolves Eat Dogs' look at Chernobyl also was fascinating. Of course, I've never been either place, so I don't know how accurate the books are as far as the scenes go.

I also read a lot of historical fiction. A couple of recent examples are The Rossetti Letter, which is a look at a courtesan's life in long-ago Venice, and The Sultan's Seal, which is set in Istanbul in the late 1800s.

It's not chick lit, but Glamorous Disasters is similar to The Nanny Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada -- although it's a look at SAT tutoring in New York.
And Little Lady, Big Apple is a decent piece of chick lit. Interesting story line, funny characters, no explicit bedroom scenes.

Among other things, I'm now reading -- actually re-reading -- Jesus the Christ. I highly recommend it to anyone who's LDS who hasn't read it before (or who hasn't read it in a while).

Next time in Venice ...

maybe I'll do this:Although I'll need to wear a life jacket.
The New York Times story is here.

At least I'm taking responsibility

Laura has become obsessed with taking her temperature. We have a digital thermometer, so it's not like a mishap would involve broken glass or mercury poisoning, but I still like to supervise.
But alas, this morning I told her to go ahead and do it herself. And then Kevin and I heard a crash in our bathroom. And then she brought the digital thermometer to me -- in three pieces.
But those three pieces didn't include the battery, so I told her to go find it. Which she did.
Which was when the real problem began. When I put the battery back in and snapped the cover on, the thermometer began emitting a VERY high-pitched ringing noise. Almost high enough that only small dogs would be affected by it, but not quite, because it was driving me crazy.
But with the help of multiple tiny screwdrivers -- and dropping the stupid thing on the floor myself and then banging it against the wall -- I managed to get it to stop making that noise. And it appears to be working normally.
But I've informed Laura she won't be using the thermometer herself EVER AGAIN. I mean never. Not even when she's 17. She asked how she'll be able to take her kids' temperatures when she grows up, and I told her she'll have to have her husband do it.
So, if sometime in 2026, any of you are living next door to a young married couple and the wife -- whose name is Laura and who you know spent more than half of her pre-adult life overseas with an insane mother -- comes over and says her child is sick and could you please take his temperature for her ...
Well, you'll know why.

Good things about the Foreign Service

U.S. government employees get all of the federal holidays off, of course. But when you're posted in another country, you also get that country's holidays off. And because Trinidad is such a diverse place, it recognizes a wide variety of religious and other events as public holidays.
So tomorrow the embassy is closed for Indian Arrival Day. It commemorates the day in May 1845 when the first ship of indentured servants from East India arrived. What's amazing is that it wasn't even a national Trini holiday until the 1990s.

Tracking down my friends

Today I've added some links to the list on the right. I also deleted the link to my sister Laurie's blog, which she hasn't updated since March 2007. If she ever decides to update it, perhaps I'll decide to link to it again.
As for the additions ...
Science Teacher Mommy is one of my friends from church in Houston (when we lived in a not-very-attractive apartment complex before we bought our house in Kingwood). She and her husband now live in Oregon with their little boys, who are adorable and say and do the funniest things.
Jim is one of my friends from the American Copy Editors Society who also lives in the Pacific Northwest. He has a grand plan to escape from the newspaper business, and he's not even going to have to move overseas to do it.
Jill is another friend from ACES. She lives in Southern California and cooks a lot of things that always look tasty. I always save the recipes but don't get around to making them -- at least not yet.
And Helen and Andy are a wife-and-husband team I worked with at the Houston Chronicle whose blog about their daughter, Grace, is part of the Chronicle's ever-expanding online offering. Grace is the same age as Laura and is every bit as entertaining -- although they haven't mentioned whether she has a habit of getting pancake syrup in her hair.

World flag pop quiz

Quick! Which world flag has a pitchfork on it?
OK, so it's not really a pitchfork. It's a triton. Isn't that an underwater pitchfork?
Those exact questions were running through my head while I was watching Laura's volleyball class at the international school on Wednesday afternoon.
This was after the aforementioned sports day, and I had some extra time to try to identify the flags running around the perimeter of the gym. There's one for every country with a kid at the international school, in alphabetical order, and it looks like they're attached with velcro -- which will come in handy next year, I'm sure, if a kid from Burkina Faso shows up.
And, to the school's credit, there are little labels with the names under each flag. But the pitchforked one was on the opposite side of the gym, my eyes aren't as good as they used to be, and it was a lot easier to wonder.
Of course, I never did figure it out and had to look it up later on the Internet.
Barbados! I guess I should have been thinking closer to home (or at least to Trinidad) than I was.

ISPS elementary school sports day

As I've mentioned before, the elementary grades of the international school are divided into houses. Laura's house finished second of the four at sports day on Wednesday. She competed in three events: the running relay, the sack race relay and the ball-and-spoon relay (pictured below). She got two gold medals and one silver one. At least they're nicer than the medals the kindergarteners at her school in Colorado got last year.

Small victories

1. The dry cleaner found Kevin's pants -- which they had given to someone else -- and even were nice about it. I've never had a dry cleaner in the States be able to find our clothes after they'd accidently been given to someone else.
2. Today I was able to buy Cool Whip -- or at least the generic kind -- after many weeks of wondering whether it ever would be available again. This is important because it means I'll be able to make Karene Groesbeck's recipe for eclair cake, which is great. I will have to make the graham crackers from scratch, but that'll be easier than making Cool Whip from scratch. Because let's face it, I don't really want to know what's in that stuff.

Dad vs. Dad

I wrote recently about my best friend, Deirdre, and the fact she was having a baby any day. Nate was born Friday, May 9, and is the cutest thing. (His immediate cuteness factor was increased somewhat by being born by C-section. C-section=less trauma for the baby. Not that I've ever had one.)
So Deirdre's dad, George, has sent me lots of pictures of Nate and him being adored by various family members. George also created an online album documenting the day they arrived at the hospital, the walk through the corridors and such.
Nate is his first grandchild, and I know he's waited a long time for this. But I can't help comparing his behavior to that of my own father.
My parents have six grandchildren and two stepgrandchildren. I'm pretty sure my dad has never taken a photo of any of them. In fact, I wouldn't be totally shocked if someday I was to visit a hospital where one of my sisters was giving birth to find my dad sprawled in a chair in the waiting room, gulping a soft drink and munching on snack crackers. He'd be bellowing, loud enough to hear in the labor and delivery room, "Hey, (fill in name of mother)! Have you had that baby yet?"
Just thinking about it makes me laugh. Hard. And it's not like he's a particularly tacky person or anything. I can just totally imagine all of those things happening that way.

A positive story from the earthquake

The Chinese earthquake story truly is horrifying -- especially for those of us who live in quake-prone areas. But this New York Times story was very touching.

It was good. Really.

Last night, Kevin and I went to a concert by French "contemporary" jazz pianist Paul Lay. It was interesting, although very little of it was music I would describe as jazz. And his hair was poofier than it is in this photo.
The concert was at the Venezuelan Embassy. Or, more correctly, the Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. (There's no shortage of portraits of either Simon Bolivar or Hugo Chavez there.) It seemed to me that the guy from Alliance Francaise, whose event it really was, said it was being held there because theirs is the only embassy with an auditorium. But since my French is almost nonexistent, I could be wrong about that little detail.
So, thanks to our deputy chief of mission (who gave us his tickets), I've expanded my cultural horizons. Woo hoo!

Laura regains her snaggletooth status

I was walking between embassy buildings -- we have three that each are a few blocks from each other -- to a meeting yesterday when my cell phone rang. It was Laura telling me her right front tooth finally had come out.
She'd lost three teeth already, so it's not like this was a first. But you'd never know that from her excitement.
The other top front tooth is on the verge of coming out, too. Already her little voice has a lisp, and I'm sure the other tooth coming out will make it even more noticeable.
But on the bright side, at least she didn't request quarters this time. Although I might be able to find a few dollars in U.S. quarters around here if I scoured really, really hard.

I wish I could make a poodle out of broccoli

The New York Times has a great slideshow of photos of works of art made of vegetables and fruits. I wouldn't have the patience for such things, but they look pretty neat.

Important question of the day

Didn't Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pies used to be bigger? Or is my memory just bad?
It's all Kevin's fault. He brought oatmeal cream pies back from his trip to Washington.
Speaking of which, Kevin was in Washington for the past week and got home last night. (I got to make a trip to the airport after dark. How exciting!)
Among other things, Kevin bought grits for our friends the Reeces, who apparently had run out. THE HORROR! You can't deny grits to a Georgian without bad things happening.
In better news, the embassy's management officer -- my boss -- made cookies and brought them in this morning for all of the mothers who work in the embassy annex.
Yep, there's nothing like your boss bringing you cookies for breakfast the day after Mother's Day.
Tomorrow's adventure may involve getting the air conditioner in our kitchen fixed. But maybe not. Either way, at least it's not dumping water on the top of the cabinets and counter anymore. Soggy cornstarch isn't pretty.

Laura joins the Navy

The USS Carr, a U.S. Navy ship, is docked in Chagauramas (a few miles west of Port of Spain) for a few days, and the embassy's Military Liaison Office arranged for the Americans at post to get tours this morning.
Yes, they did try to persuade Laura to join the Navy -- although to their credit, they said it would be best for her to get a college degree first so she could be an officer.
But the ship was pretty cool. We got to see the guns and radar/sonar and lifeboats. (This photo is of Laura on the flight deck.) Overall, I thought it was very interesting.

Not the ones you find half dead on clearance at Lowe's

Today's Houston Chronicle gardening section has a list of the top 10 varieties of daylilies for southeast Texas and similar areas.
They include this one, Elizabeth Salter.
And no, they don't include the ones I always insisted on buying cheap when we lived there. Although those were lovely, too, once they were planted and given a chance to really grow.

Among possible reasons I'm not as thin as I used to be

One word: eclairs.
I made these Wednesday night for an event at work yesterday. I didn't eat a single one myself. But Laura and I did scrape the pastry cream out of the bottom of the bowl after I was finished.

I'm pretty sure all Texans aren't evil

I was warned by multiple people when we moved from Houston to Denver that many people in Colorado hate Texans. I didn't see it myself, but I'm sure there are plenty of Coloradoans who wish they'd just stay away.
And then there's the news coverage, including this from the Rocky Mountain News (which I never saw as having an anti-Texas bias when I worked there):

Charges in bison killings

A Texan is accused in the killing of 32 bison that strayed off a neighboring ranch onto his Park County property.

Hilarious story of the day

I graduated from BYU in 1995. (That was, according to Laura, when dinosaurs roamed the earth.) I've only been back to campus a handful of times since, and the most recent time was in February 2002.
So imagine my surprise when our assistant regional security officer -- a Diplomatic Security guy -- called me this morning to say there had been a delay in the background check for my top-secret clearance because I apparently owe $20 to BYU.
So after calling the collections office in Provo, I learn that a silver car with South Carolina plates SOMEHOW linked to me got a parking ticket on campus Sept. 17, 2002. The ticket had been written off as an uncollected debt, and this was the first I'd heard of it. But I knew I hadn't even been in the Mountain time zone during that month. Living in Houston, yes. Visiting Chicago and the Bahamas, yes. But on campus? No.
(Kudos to Bill Welsh, the very nice guy in the administration building who said he was taking the hold off of my account.)
But there still was the little problem of where the ticket came from. And then it hit me: AMANDA.
Amanda has a silver Daewoo. It is registered in our father's name. Amanda moved to American Fork to live with Daniel and Heather that fall. And she hasn't always been what one would call a parking-law-abiding citizen.
And she now has admitted, via e-mail, that yes, she does remember getting the parking ticket on campus.
How bizarre is that?

I've been threatening to do this for years

But finally I've trimmed a bouganvilla and used the branches as a flower arrangement.
Actually, this is from two different bushes. I guess that's quite obvious. And the pink blooms already were waning before I cut them. But I still think it's pretty cool looking.

I'd forgotten how much fun this game is

We bought it years ago when Laura was a big fan of the Wiggles (watching their shows and movies, going to their concerts, singing "Wags the Dog, he does the tango" all the time, etc.). But I'd pretty much forgotten about it.
Sunday afternoon, I told Laura we'd play a game, and she picked this one. It's pretty fun, and it'll be even more fun now that I've changed the batteries so the voices will be clearer.
And yes, for the sake of any Foreign Service people reading this, that is a standard issue Drexel Heritage loveseat the game is sitting on. Gotta love being able to identify someone's employer just by looking at their furniture.

There's a reason this is one of the most viewed stories at RockyMountainNews.com

Because it's ... well, weird.

Jeff Peckman is back at it, and this time he is bringing little green men along for the ride.

The Denver man, who sponsored an offbeat ballot initiative that would have required the city to implement stress-reduction techniques, now wants to ask voters to create a commission dealing with space aliens.

"It is important because if you're driving down the highway and you saw a crash of a small spaceship and a car or a bus full of kids, you really wouldn't know what to do," Peckman said Thursday. "Do you wait for the hazardous materials experts to show up because of potential contaminants from another solar system? What do you do? People really don't know."

Peckman, 54, who is single and lives with his parents, has submitted to the city a draft of the proposed ordinance, which would require the creation of an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission.

As required, the city is holding a "review and comment" meeting on the proposed ballot initiative with Peckman on Thursday.

"I don't know what we're going to ask him yet," said David Broadwell, an assistant city attorney.

Peckman hopes to collect enough signatures - he needs about 4,000 - to get the proposed initiative on the November ballot.

(You can read more here.)

In honor of Nicole

Laura and I have been reading the Little House on the Prairie books. We finished Little House in the Big Woods and are about halfway through Little House on the Prairie -- or, more correctly, Oklahoma.
But the book is reminding me of all kinds of funny things that happened when I was little -- both because the events in the book remind me of family events and because our family read all the books multiple times.
So, I was lying in bed at 3:30 this morning unable to sleep, I recalled a poem that Nicole wrote at some point:

Wild pony on the loose
I have to go catch it with my noose
Running wild, on the prairie
My, that pony sure looks hairy.

I'll try to find a photo of our pony Sandy, whom I'm sure inspired this poem. She was a hairy little thing.

Becoming a pseudo-aunt from afar

It's not like I'm not a aunt for real. My parents pretty much ensured that when they decided to have 11 kids.
But my best friend, Deirdre, is having a baby any day now. And even though she's a continent and a half away, I get regular updates -- some from her, some from her dad.
It's fun to be friends with your friends' dads.

Cool steel pan video

On YouTube, you can see the steel ensemble from Dunross Prep School at Trinidad's national music festival. (Dunross is a school near us that many of the Trini and long-term resident expat kids in our neighborhood attend.)

Farewell, Vonage

We finally cancelled Vonage this week. We haven't been able to get it to work at any point during the six months we've been here, and it seemed silly to keep paying just to maintain our phone number.
So all of you will have to e-mail us instead. Or use Skype, at which we've become quite adept.

I have no idea who watches movies on the Sci-Fi Channel,

but the descriptions are pretty funny. I was just noticing today's offerings, and I think the descriptions say it all.

Sailors go to sea to search for a prehistoric shark.
Surfers become a giant crocodile's seafood buffet.
A giant octopus terrorizes New York.
A scientist tried to stop a giant squid from killing people.

Obviously it's important for the villains, for lack of a better word, in these movies to be giant. Wouldn't it be funnier if a normal-sized octopus terrorized New York?
Or maybe there's already a movie like that and I just haven't noticed its description on SciFi yet.

Mmmm, pecan pie

OK, not really. But these muffins sort of taste like it. I saved the recipe out of Southern Living years ago, and I've made them a few times here -- both for us and to give away. I've had two breakfast-type events at work over the past week, and I made these both times. Since people keep asking for the recipe ...

Pecan pie muffins

1 cup chopped pecans
1 cup brown sugar (even the grainy Trini kind works)
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 eggs
1/2 cup butter, melted

Stir together the dry ingredients, add the rest and stir. Bake in lined muffin tin (this makes nine muffins) at 350 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes.

Of course, now I'm out of pecans. Perhaps I'll be able to find more ...