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Monday, May 21st, 2012
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12:30 am - Poem for Monday and Homestead Farm Strawberries
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( Sea Rose )
Sunday was quite warm and mostly sunny -- we didn't get the eclipse in this part of the U.S., and Tropical Storm Alberto stayed well south of us -- so after lunch and Adam's job at Hebrew school, we all went to Homestead Farm to pick strawberries. It's early in the season, so it wasn't mobbed and there were lots of berries just coming ripe. We also stopped to see the goats, lambs, calf, pigs, and chickens:
( Strawberry Season )
After dinner we had intended to watch the finale of Harry's Law, but although neither our local TV listings nor NBC said so in advance, it's apparently been postponed a week in favor of reality TV reruns to get higher May sweeps ratings. So instead Daniel, Paul and I watched a few more seventh season DS9 episodes -- never a hardship -- while Adam biked with friends and prepared for HSAs this week!
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| Sunday, May 20th, 2012
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12:05 am - Poem for Sunday, Glen Echo, Great Falls
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( Amy Check On My Square Inch of Land )
We had a pretty quiet morning waiting for Adam to get home -- he'd slept over a friend's house, I actually did some work before lunch -- then we took him for his first day interning in the Photoworks section of Glen Echo Park's arts program. Since it was a gorgeous day, we took Daniel and left early to pick Adam up in the afternoon, walked around the wooded paths, and went to see the photos, glassworks, pottery, painting, and various other arts on display in the park.
( Artist Colony )
Then we went up Macarthur Boulevard to Great Falls, where we saw the growing goslings, plus a pair of skinks, several herons, and many cormorants. We came home and had fake chicken and stuffing, then Adam went out for a run and the rest of us watched the first few episodes of Deep Space Nine's seventh season, which really does not have a bad episode.
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| Saturday, May 19th, 2012
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12:17 am - Poem for Saturday, Great Falls, The Alternate
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( A Nightingale in the Cage of My Breast )
I had a fairly quiet Friday. Daniel, who apparently stayed up at least till 3:30 a.m., slept very late, so I spent the morning working on a review of Deep Space Nine's "The Alternate", not one of the best but it's an Odo backstory episode which makes it worth watching. When he finally got up, Daniel decided he wanted a Haagen Dazs milkshake, so I took him to the mall and went to admire the new Brighton nautical charms (why yes, I do have the while he was having his Belgian chocolate.
We had dinner with my parents, then Adam went to sleep at a friend's and the rest of us watched the Nikita season finale, which had about eleven shark-jumping moments but I have never cared about the plot on this show anyway; there are three completely awesome kick-ass women who are regulars and now there's a female VP of the US too. After that we watched the last four episodes of DS9's sixth season, which are mostly sad episodes but really terrific. Here are some photos from Great Falls last weekend -- mules, turtles, a millipede, and a few more goslings:
( Summer on the Way )
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| Friday, May 18th, 2012
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12:14 am - Poem for Friday and College Park Aviation
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( Change of Life )
Having Daniel home means, to start with, lots of sorting and multiple laundries -- first his clothes, then his sheets and comforter, then his towels -- and trying to figure out where in the house to keep his refrigerator, his computer boxes, etc. for the summer. Not that I am complaining, since it is fun to have a full house again! Today we went to Bagel City to get bagels for breakfast and to have lunch, though I could not persuade him to let me take him to the mall and buy him new shorts.
I saw two deer but no bunnies in the woods today; I got a late start because I was trying to clean up various bits of the house, which is completely hopeless with all the extra clutter. We watched the second-to-last episode of Awake, which makes me very sad that the show is ending, plus some excellent sixth season DS9...I am also sad about Donna Summer and Chuck Brown, my musical youth disappearing. Here are a few more photos from the College Park Aviation Museum on Mother's Day, including Hap Arnold, Orville Wright, and pioneering women:
( Early Flight )
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| Thursday, May 17th, 2012
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12:50 am - Placeholder for Thursday
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I've been running around a lot of the day -- mostly good things, Adam had orthodontist while I was at the dentist (he's having wisdom teeth out in a few weeks, I need a crown on a tooth that got chipped), then he had tennis, then we rushed dinner to go to College Park and retrieve Daniel, who had to move out of his dorm room within 24 hours after finishing his last final exam because the key card IDs are deactivated to get students to move along -- but as a result it's after 11 and I'm completely disorganized! I shall go be like Daisy and Cinnamon below -- more tomorrow.
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| Wednesday, May 16th, 2012
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12:40 am - Poem for Wednesday, Great Falls Goslings, Glee
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( What Things Want )
The weather cleared for most of Tuesday, though we're having a thunderstorm tonight. I spent a lot of time reorganizing my jewelry box after having bought one of these for my beads (which are mostly cheap knockoffs of Brighton and Pandora). Then I went to meet twistedchick at the Silver Diner, where I had a very good egg-white-and-feta omelet that ended up earning me a coupon for a free meal because I hadn't ordered it with egg whites -- I had assumed maybe it came that way and I hadn't paid attention to the menu, since a lot of the items are heart-healthy, but a manager came over and gave me the coupon anyway.
After lunch we went to walk around Appalachian Spring and Tiara Galleries, but before we could go anywhere else, Adam called to tell me that after taking an A.P. exam and going to lunch with his friends, he'd arrived home and realized he'd forgotten his key. So I rushed back to let him in and did some work till ![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif) apaulled got home. After all the rain, the woods were very green, and I saw several deer, a couple of bunnies, and a fox kit quickly followed by the mother -- that's two foxes in daylight this week, which is unusual around here. We watched the Glee two-parter, which was ridiculous in a number of ways but I loved the retro songs (more that, less Nicki Minaj please) and I loved Unique. Great Falls goslings:
( Baby Geese )
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| Tuesday, May 15th, 2012
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12:34 am - Poem for Tuesday, Civil War Encampment, Smash
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( England in 1819 )
Monday was a gloomy, rainy day, though that didn't stop me from anything but getting to take a walk in the woods. apaulled was working from home because his car was in for maintenance. Our power went out a bit after 11 a.m. and PEPCO said it would be more than an hour to restore for the neighborhood, so we went to the Indian place in the mall for lunch, then went to pick up his car. The power came back on just as we got home, so we worked for several hours, then watched Jane Eyre which we needed to record again because our old disc wouldn't close.
Adam brought a friend home to study for the A.P. exam on Tuesday after walking home in the rain -- they were drenched. We had leftover veggie meatballs for dinner, watched Sunday's Once Upon a Time -- cheesy special effects but satisfying season finale -- then watched Smash, which I almost just called Glee which in fact it what it deserves as many of the characters remind me of Rachel Berry and I don't mean because they have great singing voices. ( Spoilers. ) Here are photos of the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Unit, the Civil War reenactors who were demonstrating last weekend at Great Falls what Union soldiers ate, how they kept themselves entertained, what their tents were like, and how they practiced medicine:
( Living History )
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| Monday, May 14th, 2012
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12:36 am - Poem for Monday and College Park Mother's Day
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( One Year (Mother Psalm 9) )
I spent Mother's Day with much of my family, and it was really nice to be doing that for a happy occasion! Adam and my mother were working at Hebrew school in the morning, so I slept late and did some futzing around in the internet, then we drove with my parents to the College Park Aviation Museum, where we met Paul's parents. After visiting the museum, we went and picked up Daniel -- who is in the middle of finals, so he couldn't join us earlier -- for dinner at Plato's Diner, which has pretty Grecian garden decorations all around and where I had a very good feta cheese omelet with veggie sausage and home fries.
We all went back to Daniel's dorm room so he could show my in-laws his computer and we could pick up his winter clothes so we don't have to pack those to bring home later in the week. Then we came home for Harry's Law, whose main story was a nail-biter but whose second story, about a man whose brother desperately needed blood but wasn't allowed to give him blood because he was gay, was the really emotional one (the no-gay-men-ever restriction is pure bigotry, as the episode pointed out). My mother gave me a Brighton charm and my family gave me Pride and Prejudice on Blu-Ray, so I had a very nice day!
( Mother's Day )
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| Sunday, May 13th, 2012
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12:18 am - Poem for Sunday, Great Falls, Much Ado
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( Back )
Quickie because I just stayed up too late talking about The Avengers with Adam, who planned to see it with his two best friends after dinner out, then ran into a bunch of other friends who worked on tech with him and they all went to the movie together. (They debated who is hotter, Loki or Thor, hahaha.) Earlier I had a nice, quiet Saturday morning, not doing a lot besides folding laundry, because son graciously shared his cold with me; he was studying for his AP exam, so we saw little of him till after lunch.
In the mid-afternoon, we went to Great Falls, where we walked along the towpath toward Swain's Lock instead of climbing on the rocks. We saw four families of geese with goslings, the canal boat mules, herons, cormorants, and lots of other birds, insects, and some turtles. There was a Civil War camp set up by reenactors outside the Great Falls Tavern and we talked to some of them about medicine and goods carried by Union soldiers.
( Near the Canal )
In the evening while Adam was at the movie, we watched a recording of the David Tennant-Catherine Tate Much Ado About Nothing. It was fantastic -- hilarious, wonderfully acted, perfectly paced, and really well filmed considering that the action takes place on a revolving stage where it's impossible to see all the actors all of the time depending on one's perspective in the audience. We had thought about going to see The Taming of the Shrew at Olney, but I wasn't feeling great and we'd have had to leave hours early to get tickets, so I am just as glad we stayed in!
Three-week late fannish5: ( Great Speeches )
Two-week late fannish5: ( Deleted Scenes )
One-week late fannish5: ( Jossed To Death )
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| Saturday, May 12th, 2012
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12:03 am - Poem for Saturday, 'Rivals,' Richmond Critters
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( Magdalen Walks )
Paul worked from home on Friday because of construction at his office, so we got to have breakfast and lunch together. Meanwhile I wrote a review of "Rivals" and did some editing and had cats meowing piteously because they took the fact that we were both home to mean that it must be time to eat. We chatted with Daniel about Mother's Day plans and with Adam about his weekend plans which apparently require us to drive him to the movies at a time when we expect to be at a play.
We had dinner with my parents, then watched Nikita, which had a plot so shark-jumpingly ridiculous that I stopped caring whether or not it got picked up for a third season just as the news arrived that it had. I am really bummed that, as expected, both Harry's Law and Awake have been canceled -- guess I won't be watching anything on NBC next season, not that they'll care since I am over 30. Don't the advertisers realize that my demographic has more money to spend on the cars they advertise than teenagers do?
Speaking of teenagers, we then watched The Social Network, which has finally appeared on Starz On Demand. I did not expect to like it but I did expect to be impressed with the directing, which lots of people went on about in their reviews. To them I say, WTF -- a lot of it looked like television cuts and except for the crew sequence there wasn't one really unique sequence in the film. The screenplay was all right but Sorkin's written much better. Timberlake was more memorable than Eisenberg but there wasn't one character I admired or rooted for at all. I won't be watching that again. Some animals from Lewis Ginter Botanic Garden:
( Birds and Bees )
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| Friday, May 11th, 2012
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12:03 am - Poem for Friday and Lewis Ginter Gardens
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( From Honey to Ashes )
I did a bunch of running around on Thursday and only got two out of three laundries folded, but son said his could wait, anyway. I had to return something at Target and pick up laundry detergent, I had to get a couple of other things on Rockville Pike. I stopped at my parents' house because I had asked my mother to dig out a children's book that I had thought of while discussing Maurice Sendak the other day (Miss Jaster's Garden by N.M. Bodecker) and we ended up looking at old photos that had belonged to Aunt Shirley, whose birthday would have been Friday. I inherited a gorgeous Native American eagle pin that we were guessing was probably bought at the Thunderbird Shop in Rehoboth Beach, where we used to stay with Shirley and Paul when I was little, so it's a wonderful souvenir.
Adam spent most of the evening practicing for the US government A.P. exam next week, though we all had ravioli together and discussed political idiocy. I had a great walk in the neighborhood and saw three deer, two bunnies, several chipmunks and one turkey vulture that flew off when it saw me. Evening TV involved a mediocre DS9 episode and a fantastic episode of Awake, which Zap2It says is definitely going to be canceled along with Harry's Law, which makes me very sad -- the former as much as the latter, I think, even though I don't like the procedural aspects much. Here is some more scenery from Lewis Ginter Botanic Garden in Richmond:
( Garden Greenery )
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| Thursday, May 10th, 2012
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12:48 am - Poem for Thursday and Richmond Flowers
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( Superstition )
I had another day mostly at home working and getting stuff done in the house. I decided it was finally time to file my kids' report cards and concert programs and honor roll certificates and AP score notifications -- I keep all these things in binders, not entirely trusting my kids to be able to find important documents on short notice should they be needed, and knowing they will lose all those third place and honorable mention certificates that they might want someday -- anyway, it took two hours to sort and file everything.
Yes, it's several years later than it should have been, and yes, I wish he'd said it before the North Carolina vote instead of afterward -- not that it would have made a difference -- but President Obama made me and many other people happy today declaring unequivocally his support for same sex marriage. I doubt it will make much difference in November either way -- I can't imagine any gay rights activist voting for Romney out of anger at Obama for taking too long, and I doubt any passionate anti-gay bigots were supporting Obama in the first place.
We watched this week's The Borgias, which was much, much too bloody for my taste -- not even hot Medici women nor gay sex in a graveyard could make up for that, even if one of the people who died really deserved what he got -- and two episodes of Wild Australia, which is my proof that either intelligent design is ridiculous or God had developed an insane sense of humor by the time he got around to antipodean marsupials. Here are some flowers from Lewis Ginter Botanic Garden in Richmond:
( Virginia Blooming )
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| Wednesday, May 9th, 2012
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12:05 am - Poem for Wednesday and Sheep & Wool
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( Chicken Soup With Rice )
Oh please don't go -- we'll eat you up -- we love you so! R.I.P. Maurice Sendak. I worked all day; I got a huge amount done, but as a result I have absolutely nothing of interest to report. Watched Glee, rolled eyes, Rachel and Finn are not mature enough to graduate from high school let alone get married. Watched this week's Once Upon a Time, want more Rumpelstiltskin, less Regina.
A numerical majority of North Carolina voters are idiots as well as bigots. Do people really want to deny health benefits to elderly widows to punish gay people, or did they simply not read the entire bill? Please, Marylanders, turn out to keep gay marriage legal here in November -- don't make our state another haven for prejudice and embarrassment for civil rights. A few more sheep from the festival:
( Sheep on Show )
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| Tuesday, May 8th, 2012
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12:01 am - Poem for Tuesday, Crafts, W.E., Romeo and Juliet
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( Travelling )
dementordelta had to work all weekend and I had a funeral, so we decided that we both needed a day to decompress. Our original plan was to go see The Avengers, but the timing of the shows wasn't great (we'd have had to skip lunch) and I discovered as she was driving up here that W.E., Madonna's Wallis-and-Edward movie, was on Amazon Instant Video as of last week, which we figured meant we were destined to watch it. It's not great, but it's not nearly as heinous as the reviews made it out to be; as Delta said, it's not even the worst movie about Wallis and Edward out there. Abbie Cornish looks uncannily like young Meg Tilly with dark hair and it's impossible for me to look at Katie McGrath as Thelma Furness and not see Morgana, but the costumes and interiors are lovely and we just ignored things we knew to be factually wrong.
We went to Lebanese Taverna for lunch, then stopped in Tuesday Morning to see whether they had any new half-price Barbies or awesome stationery (they had both, so we both now own the Grace Kelly To Catch a Thief doll and some cards). Then we came back to my house because we had also discovered that the BBC Romeo and Juliet from 1978 -- with young Alan Rickman as Tybalt and younger Anthony Andrews as Mercutio -- was streaming for free on Amazon Instant Video. It wasn't the best production of R&J, but the tights and codpieces alone made it worth watching. Paul took Adam to Glen Echo to see about internng there over the summer. After Delta had to go home, my family had tofu dogs and watched Smash, which these days makes me roll my eyes except when someone is singing. Here are some of non-sheep photos from the Sheep and Wool Festival:
( Fiber Fest )
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| Monday, May 7th, 2012
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12:39 am - Poem for Monday, Sheep and Wool, Funeral
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( Requiescat )
My family spent the morning at Aunt Shirley's funeral, which was lovely but sad -- Stephanie and Debbie had arranged for everyone to participate in the readings and there were flowers and birds all around. Then we went to Jane and Bob's house for lunch and to share more memories of Aunt Shirley. Nicole had gone back to New York with her young daughters but Uncle Mickey was still in town along with several cousins who had traveled for the memorial service.
In the afternoon we drove Daniel back to the University of Maryland after watching a couple of episodes of Deep Space Nine and having an early pizza dinner (apparently there is no really good pizza in College Park). Then we watched this week's Harry's Law and Upstairs Downstairs (in which Edward VIII abdicated and the servants declared their approval of George VI). Here are some sheep from the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival:
( Baaaaa )
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| Sunday, May 6th, 2012
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12:21 am - Placeholder for Sunday
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I spent Saturday with most of my extended family, which would have been really nice had it not been under unhappy circumstances. We met Paul's parents at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival at the Howard County Fairgrounds, where we had a picnic while listening to Celtic music and went to see the goats, rabbits, alpacas, and many barns of sheep as well as the crafts being sold and produced at the festival. It was quite warm but there was a nice breeze and we saw many goslings waddling in the fields of the farms we passed on the way to the fairgrounds.
Then we came home, cleaned up and went to dinner at my cousins Stephanie and Gene's house with my parents, Nicole and two of her daughters, Uncle Mickey, and all my DC cousins, plus several longtime family friends. From there we all went to the retirement community where Aunt Shirley spent the last several years of her life for a memorial service. Many of my parents' friends were there as well as my aunt's friends and there were remembrances by Shirley's daughters and granddaughters, nieces and nephews, and one of the staff people who had taken care of my aunt, plus a slide show by Jane Levey of the photographs Shirley researched and curated. Here is her obituary.
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| Saturday, May 5th, 2012
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12:44 am - Poem for Saturday, Brookside Spring, Sanctuary
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( Between Going and Staying )
Daniel is home, Uncle Mickey is staying with my parents, and my sister Nicole is coming tomorrow so that we can all go to the memorial service for Aunt Shirley. So we'll have a nice family reunion for the worst possible reason. I had a pretty quiet Friday; I spent the morning writing a review of Deep Space Nine's "Sanctuary", then Paul and I went to pick up Daniel, who wasn't even sure he could get home till Sunday morning at the beginning of the week but apparently was very productive finishing his final projects.
We had dinner at my parents' house with Mickey and the kids, then came home so Daniel could work on a programming project while the rest of us watched Nikita. Then we watched several mid-sixth season DS9 episodes, which is where we left off with Daniel last time he was home. Tomorrow is going to be a long day with family (in-laws before memorial dinner and service) so I'll post some photos from Brookside Gardens last week and go to bed:
( Flora and Fauna )
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| Friday, May 4th, 2012
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12:34 am - Poem for Friday and School Awards
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( The Snow Fairy )
I got up early for a good reason, for a change: Adam's school was having an awards presentation and Paul and I had received an invitation. He had won several local and national photography awards, and the school was giving him a certificate in recognition of that, plus there was a display of work by all the student artists. And they fed us donuts and orange juice, so that was lovely.
( Presentations )
I went to the mall to get new sneakers because there is a hole in the toe of my old ones -- I tend to use them as walking shoes, hiking shoes, and everything else, so I am pretty hard on shoes. Then I came home for lunch and to get some work done, and then my mother asked me if I wanted to go back to the mall to have frozen yogurt with her, which I did -- we also got Adam some running clothes (he was out biking with a friend).
We had butternut squash lasagna for dinner, watched an episode of Wild Russia on Animal Planet with many adorable critters, then watched Awake, which is getting really good but is apparently barely on the bubble for next season -- as are Harry's Law and Nikita, the other two network shows I care about. The ones I don't really care about have mostly been renewed already!
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| Thursday, May 3rd, 2012
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12:43 am - Poem for Thursday and Brookside Snapper
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( How the mind works still to be sure )
It is going to be One Of Those Weeks, so feel free to filter me off for a few days. Two people defriended me on LiveJournal on Thursday, and while we haven't been in the same fandoms for years, I couldn't help wondering whether my complaining was the last straw. Everyone in my family (parents, kids, cousins, etc.) is very stressed out and it is not conducive to happy talk.
The good news is that I had a doctor's appointment this morning and in spite of the week I am having, my blood pressure was down substantially, so I guess those ACE inhibitors really work! She has to check my potassium but said that if I have no side effects so far, I'm probably going to do well on it, so that's good news. That, a stop at CVS, and a walk were my major outings for the day.
We watched this week's The Borgias but I couldn't pass a quiz on what happened apart from Lucrezia being generally awesome (she'd make a better Pope than her father, despite some obvious problems getting the job), then Wild Australia on Planet Green. I don't even remember what else happened today apart from the Orioles beating the Yankees, so here are some photos of a baby snapping turtle at Brookside:
( Curious )
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| Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012
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12:06 am - Poem for Wednesday and Aunt Shirley
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( Red Wand )
I did not have a celebratory May Day. Aunt Shirley, wife of my Grandpa Herman's brother Paul, died during the night. We had known that she wouldn't live long when we all went to see her last weekend -- we wanted to make sure Daniel visited while he was here -- but we are all very sad and remembering many years of visiting, debating politics and talking books with her (as everyone reading this will appreciate, she was the first person who ever told me to read Pride and Prejudice).
Paul made us a Beltane meal anyway -- eggs benedict, hash browns, Cadbury eggs which are appropriate for any spring holiday -- and we watched Glee and Sunday's Once Upon a Time, though I was only half paying attention, we were talking to kids and Paul's parents, and the only thing that really caught my eye was Kurt doing The Boy From Oz (very well from what I saw).
This is my father's family circa 1974, minus myself and my sister and cousins -- my Uncle Paul, Aunt Shirley, Grandma Sylvia, Dad, Mom, and Grandpa Herman, with my dad's brother Mickey and his then-wife Carol kneeling in front. This is pretty much how I always remember Shirley looking, even decades later, though I must admit that it is hard to decide who in this photo deserves the award for Most Quintessentially Horrible '70s Clothing.
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