Manhattan Monday

Monday morning we were up bright and early and ready to get a jump on the crowds at American Girl Place. We walked up Park Avenue to 49th Street and over, stopping at a street vendor for bagels and Starbucks for coffee and hot chocolate. We arrived at the store with a few minutes to spare before opening, so Annabelle posed with the rodents:



Annabelle had a plan of attack, and we moved swiftly through the store with Fred and Mike tagging along. Mike was a remarkably good sport and even carried Annabelle's packages for her. The highlight of his morning was when a total stranger took a picture of him with all "his" American Girl merchandise. Here they are with the booty:



Annabelle's American Girl morning culminated in a cover shoot with her new doll Jess:



From American Girl Place, we headed back towards Rockefeller Center and Nintendo World. Mike was excited to finally have a chance to try out the new Wii gaming system:



Fred and I sent the kids ahead to the hotel while we picked up lunch for all of us from Pret a Manger, a sandwich shop that we had fallen in love with in London last year. It was OK, but we weren't as taken with it as we had been in England. After lunch in the hotel room, we took the subway down to see the Statue of Liberty:



We walked from Battery Park to Ground Zero and then on to Canal Street. Mike was hoping to relive the glory days of bootleg CDs such as he had had in Russia, but there was nary a counterfeit CD to be had. Watches? Check. Purses? Check. DVDs? Check. Live turtles? Check. No CDs though.

We took the metro back to the hotel to get ready for supper and the theater. We ate at Ollie's Noodle Shop in Times Square. I liked it a lot, and Annabelle really liked her miso soup. Beyond that, nobody raved about it, but I thought it was a good value for the money.

Our show for Monday night was "Les Miserables." Annabelle had sewn a Javert costume for Pellet:



He was ready at a moment's notice to spring into action should the actual Javert suddenly come down with laryngitis:



"Les Miz" is always an emotional experience, and the Broadway production was no exception. The consensus, however, was that it wasn't quite as good as it had been in London. Annabelle and I found the actress who played Fantine to be kind of on the whiney side, and Mike was bugged by the fact that Eponine was an Asian child but Caucasian adult. Race, as he explained, is not something one outgrows like asthma. Good point.

After the show, we were exhausted and freezing and our feet hurt. We decided to "splurge" on a taxi, but the taxi ride came in at $6, whereas subway fare for the 4 of us would have been $8. The cabbie was chatty and friendly, and Fred tipped him generously, and we all considered it money well spent.

The out of towners

Getting back to the airport proved to be a lot easier than getting away from it had been Friday night, but we did wind up seeing just a little more of Newark than we had planned. Our bus connection from the airport, however, went off without a hitch, and we were at our hotel by 4 that afternoon.

I had found great internet rates at the Grand Hyatt, adjacent to Grand Central Station, and our room was small yet clean and comfortable. Mike was entranced by the television screens in the elevators:



After we checked in, we set off on a walking tour. Our goal was to see the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Plaza lit up at night, which we managed to do:



It was a madhouse though, and not only did we not ice skate, we didn't even get close enough to see other people ice skating!

As we walked up Fifth Avenue on our way to the tree, we enjoyed the decorated store fronts but were aghast to see people standing in line--30 people deep--just to get inside. We stumbled across American Girl Place and were able to get inside to do a little reconnaisance work for the next day when Annabelle would launch a full-scale retail assault. Shop and awe, baby!

From the Christmas tree, we walked down towards Times Square. The kids were impressed with the Charmin restrooms on Broadway:



For supper we stopped in at Bella Vita where $50 cash bought a very large 3-topping pizza, a huge plate of spaghetti and meatballs, and 1 rootbeer (water for the rest), plus tip. After everything I had heard about what a cash suck NYC is, I didn't think that was terribly unreasonable. Heck, a trip to Chick-Fil-A in Elizabethtown leaves us $25 poorer!

We were back at the hotel and asleep by 9 that night in order to rest up for the days to come.

"Little 'Berry in the Big Apple"

I'm still working on my NYC pictures, but I did manage to throw together this glimpse of Fred on vacation:



I wish somebody would seize that 'berry, not praise it.

Party at the Point!

The driving force behind our decision to visit New York this holiday season was the West Point wedding of the son of one of my dearest friends from law school. Miki and I met our third year, when we were both visiting students at Campbell University, having been transplanted to North Carolina thanks to our husbands' military careers. When we met, her son Michael was in second grade, and Fred and I have watched him (and his younger sisters) grow up over the years.

Getting to West Point was slightly trickier than we had anticipated. Remember that movie, "Planes, Trains, & Automobiles"? We felt like we were living it last Friday! First our plane was delayed by a couple of hours. Then we had to take a tram and a shuttle to the Ramada Inn to pick up our rental car (so THAT is why it was so cheap!). And then we had to navigate our way out of Newark and up to West Point in a rain that was just enough to make a nice smear across the windshield but not enough to actually clean it off. We arrived at the Thayer Hotel around midnight, tucked the kids into bed, and took off for the bar in search of the antidote to the caffeine consumed at Dunkin' Donuts along the turnpike.

Saturday morning we let the kids sleep in while Fred and I went to visit some old friends of ours who are currently living at West Point. We got a driving tour of some of the beautiful sites, and before we knew it, it was time to go back to the hotel to get ready for the wedding.

Annabelle was excited to finally get to wear the dress and shoes we had bought just for this occasion:



Mike wore his suit from homecoming and lusted after the Hummer-limo at the church:



The rodents were thrilled to be invited to yet another wedding, and Michael and Christine were happy to pose with them:



Miki and I were pregnant at the same time 15 years ago, she with her daughter Victoria and me with our Mike. Victoria emerged into the world weighing barely 5 pounds and Mike came out at almost 10 pounds, and they have maintained this size difference over the years. Here they are as one year olds, when she was a petite little flower and he was . . . Winston Churchill:



and here they are the other night:



Annabelle's theme song for the evening was "I Could Have Danced All Night." Lucky for her there was plenty of music! Here she is dancing with Fred:



And here is the groom dancing with his little sister Katherine:



And here are Miki and Michael in the traditional mother-son dance:



The wedding was beautiful, and the reception was a blast. We were all grateful to have the chance to share in such a happy occasion!

• The rest of my wedding pictures are here.

Home again!

We had a great time at the wedding and in NYC, but it sure feels good to be home. Annabelle and I are both fighting head colds, and there is a mountain of laundry to tackle. I have well over 100 photos to go through, so I'll have to kind of chip away at blogging our vacation a little at a time. Be patient with me!

These little town blues are melting away

Well, we're off for a few days! We're headed to West Point for the weekend for a wedding and then moving to Manhattan for 3 nights. We've got theater tickets and big shopping plans. I'm not taking the computer, but I promise to take lots of pictures and post when I get back.

Still here, just busy

Well, it's a darn good thing that NaBloPoMo was last month and not this month, because I'm having a hard enough time just trying to get something out once or twice a week.

Life has been crazy lately: I hosted a coffee here at the house last weekend, and we hosted the icebreaker for Fred's conference this week last night. The kids have been busy with their activities, and I have been busy driving them to their activities. (Mike has a swim meet tonight, and I still haven't gotten around to posting my pictures from the meet a week and a half ago.) Friday night was the USAREC holiday formal, and Saturday afternoon Fred and I went to the CG's reception. Then I spent from 7 to 10 at the PX wrapping presents for donations for the high school PTO. Today was the OCSC luncheon. And on Friday we leave for New York, so there's a lot of packing to do.

We had a great time at the formal Friday night. I bought gold shoes to go with my green dress, and I am happy to report that not only were the shoes fairly inexpensive, they were also quite comfy! Too bad it was so cold Friday night though--I just about froze in the 10 feet I had to travel from the car to the club door. Here's our official photo (see, it's just like prom):



Last night the weather had warmed up quite a bit. In fact, it was so much warmer that Fred and I were able to go Hawaiian-festive for the icebreaker:

Repetitive blogging injury?

I had the most bizarre dream last night. I mean really, REALLY bizarre, even by my standards, and I think it has to be related to NaBloPoMo and my recent month of daily blogging come hell or high water.

In this dream, I was dying. I don't know why I was dying, but I was. I was behaving much as I imagine one might when facing certain death--I was crying and I was saying goodbye to my loved ones. But I was doing something else: I was blogging. In fact, I specifically remember being on the phone with my cousin Julie, and she and I were just sobbing hysterically, and then all of a sudden I said something like, "Hey, Jules, I hate to run, but I'm worried I might run out of time before I get this last entry posted." Is that blogging dedication, or what?

I think I have PNBPMSD (Post NaBloPoMo Stress Disorder). I better go back to bed.

Free stuff!

My sister has an obsession with goody bags and always has. I tease her about it, but perhaps I shouldn't cast stones, especially after the pleasure I got from the freebies at the conference I attended earlier this week.

When we signed in at the hotel, we were each given a really spiffy Department of Defense briefcase-style notebook to hold all of our papers. Isn't this sweet?



It has so many little pouches and folders for ultimate organization. One thing that isn't immediately obvious in that picture is that it also has a compass:



I'm not sure why it has a compass, but it does. Perhaps because convention centers don't generally have trees inside, thus making it impossible to navigate using the old moss-on-the-side-of-the-tree method. It's not just an office supply; it's a survival tool!

The conference itself was a really great experience. The whole point was to discuss ways to help public school systems in certain places prepare for the influx of military schoolchildren who will be headed their way over the next few years due to BRAC. ("BRAC" always makes me think of that insurance duck on TV, but it stands for Base Realignment and Closure.) Each community sent a team made up of people from various backgrounds--school board members, military commanders, superintendents and other administrators, parents (hey, that's me!), etc.

Tuesday night's dinner speaker was particularly noteworthy. We had the privilege of hearing Gary Knell, President and CEO of Sesame Workshop talk about some of the work Sesame has done on behalf of children of deployed military personnel.

Sesame Workshop and Walmart have put together an educational package geared towards young kids and their parents to help them cope with the strains of deployment. We each got a copy of the DVD that features Elmo dealing with the deployment of his father. You can watch the video yourself here.

Or you can wait until December 27th and watch Cuba Gooding, Jr., host a television special that "examines young American military families struggling with the sacrifice of long-term deployment" and "captures the extraordinary courage and touching vulnerability of both parents and children, who have embraced Sesame Workshop's effort to produce materials that will support their families." We got to see a snippet of the special, and by the end everybody in that ballroom was teary eyed.

I told Mr. Knell that I've sat through a lot of after-dinner speeches in my time, and his was by and large the best.

And look! We even got free toys to go with our dinner! How's THIS for a "happy meal"?

I'm home!

I got back from Atlanta last night and had hoped to cap off NaBloPoMo today with an overview of the conference. But frankly I'm exhausted, plus I have a big project deadline facing me tomorrow, so I need to focus on that for now. I can't believe how tiring it is to stay in a fancy hotel and eat terrific food and have interesting conversations with fun, intelligent people!

I do want to thank my guest blogger though for stepping up and helping out during my absence. Annabelle did a great job! Thanks to you guys as well for making her feel so welcome--I know she appreciated all of your comments, and so did I.

Not sure what to call this post

Ok, I'm your guest blogger for today again, but nothign exciting has happend, so I looked through my mom's photos for inspiration. Finally, I found this little image I picked up off the internet, same place I found the soluion to x. Well, here you have it:


It made me giggle, as my brother Mike turned me onto gutair music and made me a Lord of the Rings junkie, so it just fit.

Hey, it's called National Blogger Post Month, not Most Creative Post Ever. My mom has a post called, "My Boring Day". See? See? Im not the only one guilty of boring posts! AHAHA!!!!

I guess I'm amusing you, aren't I? *leaves room quietly*

This post was brought to you by...

....Annabelle! I am the suprise guest on my mom's blog, and I'm not the greatest at blogging as I haven't done it in awhile. (Rodents on the Roof hasn't been updated in months! But have patience.) But, due to NaBloPoMo, while my mom is in Atlanta (see last post), she asked me to blog for her so she can stay in the race with other bloggers. No, you can't wait a day for a new post. There has to be a daily one. Can't you live off Monorail cat and Mike the Cheerleader for a little longer? Please? But no. I have to take time out of my not-so-busy schedule to blog. Even if it's a short post.

If you're nice to my short posts, I'll show you how to find x:

Try not to miss me!

I'm off to Atlanta today. I'll be attending the DoD Conference on Education for Military-Connected Communities. I'm not taking my computer, but don't worry--I think I have tomorrow's post covered, and I'll be back Wednesday night.

No loud parties while I'm gone!

Fundraising burnout

I am so over fundraising right now. Basically the school district provides the high school band with a teacher and a room and not a heck of a lot more. Fred and I represent almost a quarter of that organization known as "Band Boosters," a group that is called upon to bankroll everything from the cleaning of uniforms to the repair of instruments to the annual band trip (which probably won't even happen since all overnight trips have been canceled--word on the street is that somebody from another school had the misfortune of coming back from an overnight class trip . . . ahem, great with child).

So anyway Fred and I and this core team of band parents have busted our collective ass this fall working to raise money for the band. We shopped for and worked (in the cold, cold rain) the concession stand at the football games. There was one amazing game at which we earned several hundred dollars, but the rest of the games were a waste. It's that one amazing time though that achieves urban legend status and keeps us banging our heads against the wall, hoping some money might fall out.

This weekend was our big gift-wrapping fundraiser. The Enlisted Spouses Club "owns" the gift-wrap concession at the PX for the holiday season, and they rent out the table for $10 per 4-hour shift to organizations, whose members wrap for donations. Fred and I went for 2 hours on Friday night; we and one other mom brought in $19. The team that followed us brought in $6. Yesterday's 4-hour shift was worth another $25 or so. In the 4 hours I worked today (along with 2 other moms), we collected about $30 in donations. Let's assume that the second (and final--hallelujah!) shift brought in another $30--we will have grossed approximately $110. Subtract the $40 it cost us in booth rental and, well, it's just not a pretty picture.

Eight people gave up 16 hours of their holiday weekend for something in the neighborhood of $70. In the past, clubs have raised hundreds of dollars in a single day. But maybe that was on a payday weekend, or maybe people were doing more shopping for gifts and less for themselves. I don't know. I for one though will not be in a hurry to vote aye on any more fundraising plans for a while.

Not giving this weather back

If this is typical Kentucky winter weather, then it suits me just fine. I don't think we're going to hit the expected high of 72 degrees today, but it's 68 and sunny and beautiful! Fred and I just took Ginger on a walk, and it felt so nice to be out in just a light jacket. Maybe this is really spring and we have skipped right over winter? Maybe? Please?

Happy birthday, Dad!

Today is my dad's birthday, so I'm posting a childhood picture of him with my grandfather:

Happy Thanksgiving!

We got a lot done around the house today, which we were able to do because we weren't busy cooking a huge meal. I'm in a bit of a panic about getting ready for Christmas, since we'll be out of town the week before and it seems like almost every day between now and then is filled up with something. So we cleaned the house and put up the Christmas tree and then went out to the Doe Run Inn for supper.

I hope all of you had a happy and peaceful Thanksgiving!

Time for another post? Already?!

NaBloPoMo is kicking my butt. I'm starting to feel about blogging like I generally do about feeding my family--didn't I just DO that?! How can it be time to do it again so soon?

My post from yesterday? Back in the good ol' pre-NaBloPoMo days, I would have been content to let you guys chew on that for ages. Look, Fred's a cheerleader! And Mike's dressed like a girl! Surely that should be enough to buy my temporary freedom, right? Not during NaBloPoMo though. So today, you get Monorail Cat:



Monorail Cat is currently one of the top images at TheFunniest.info. It doesn't matter how many times I see it; that cat cracks me up every time. So, enjoy!

Family tradition

Not a lot of people know this, but Fred was a cheerleader back in college. The reason not a lot of people know this is that I innocently mentioned it once to some of his friends from work shortly after we were married, and one of the guys from the 7th Special Forces Group laughed so hard that beer came out his nose. After that, I just didn't bring it up much. But he WAS a cheerleader, and I've got the photographic proof, straight out of Stetson's 1983 yearbook:







Those cheerleading genes must be dominant, for Mike answered the call last night by cheering for the first annual Fort Knox Turkey Bowl (what we used to call "powderpuff football" back when I was in school):



The boys practiced 3 nights last week to get ready for the big game. You can see their mad cheerleading skillz here:



If that's not enough for you (and why should it be?), there's more here, here, here, and here.

Go, Eagles!

• You can see all of the pictures from the Turkey Bowl here.

"Supertelevangelistic Sex-and-Drugs Psychosis"

Try saying THAT 3 times fast! Better yet, just go listen to it. Here's a sample of the lyrics:

I used to be a master of the anti-gay crusade
Until a butch disaster blew my pastor masquerade
But if it's true I'm pounding more than pulpits, don't blame me
It's 'cause I caught my hooker-tweaker-stud's infirmity

It's
Supertelevangelistic sex-and-drugs psychosis
Worse than plague and bird flu crossed with osteoporosis
We were playing doctor and he gave this diagnosis:
Supertelevangelistic sex-and-drugs psychosis

Umm Haggard Bakker Swaggart umm Tammy Faye
Umm Haggard Bakker Swaggart umm Tammy Faye

You can read the rest of the lyrics here. Click here to download and play the MP3. (Needless to say, this one isn't exactly G rated.)

If I don't post this now, I'll probably forget

I lost my keys this morning. I was trying to get myself together to go to the commissary, and the keys were nowhere to be found. Not in my purse. Not on the counter. Not in my pocket. Not hanging on the key rack. Nowhere! And then it dawned on me . . .

I had turned the car on to let it warm up a good 15 to 20 minutes earlier. So THAT's where the keys were!

Trust me, homeschooling was a cinch

It always amazes me when people assume that somehow my life is easier with the kids back in school. Quieter, yes. Easier? I'm not so sure about that.

For one thing, when you're homeschooling, you can sleep as late as you want. You move at your own pace, and you can always feel free to skip over something and come back to it later (or never at all).

But when the kids are in school, you're on somebody else's timetable and that somebody else is deciding what is important and what can be skipped. Whereas I would probably be inclined to say, "OK, this kid seems to understand what a fable is and what the different organelles are in a cell. Let's bag school and go to Rome for a few days," teachers in regular school want to see tangible evidence of subject mastery. For Mike, this has meant a lot of special projects this year.

Over fall break (hey, thanks for that, 'cause really there's nothing I'd rather do over a vacation than nag my kid to do his homework!), the mission was to "write a myth or a fable suitable for a children's book and illustrate it." Smart boy that he is, Mike asked himself, "What is the easiest thing I can think of to draw?" The answer was "sheep," and thus a myth (or maybe it was a fable--I can't keep them straight) was born:



It's really a cute story!

He had another project in biology recently, which was to make a model of a cell. There were extra credit points to be given out to kids who made 3-dimensional models. Mike molded his cell's organelles out of clay (that turned out to be specially formulated NOT to dry out--OOPS!) and glued them onto a cut out styrofoam ball. Here is the finished product:



And here he is talking on it:



It's a cell phone. Get it?!?!

Paintophobia

That's what I have. An intense and utterly unrealistic fear of colored walls.

In my defense, I have very good reasons for this fear. Fred and I spent many years living in rented houses where we tried our best to make do with other people's butt-ugly color schemes. We did have it written into our lease in our second North Carolina house that "tenant has the right to remove the monkey wallpaper from the fourth bedroom." Yes, monkeys. On bikes. And not cute circus monkeys either. Picture ugly "Planet of the Ape"-style simians riding old-fashioned bikes. :::shudder:::

When we left North Carolina for Hawaii and moved into a house that had all white walls, it was like breathing clean air for the first time. We bought our house in San Antonio and did exercise our ownerly rights to paint the kitchen and re-paint Annabelle's room a slightly less shocking shade of pink. But that was it for us and paint, and our walls in Germany remained pure and untouched.

When we were moving in to this house here at Fort Knox, we were too busy buying furniture and curtains to even think about paint, and I didn't care. I was happy with my white walls. Until the other day.

On Wednesday I went to a baby shower that was hosted by a friend whose house I had never visited. Her house is exactly like my house, except that her house is so beautifully decorated that Martha Stewart would come away feeling like an abject failure. It's one thing when you visit somebody and their house looks so much better than yours, and you can chalk it up to just being a better house. You get to console yourself with the thought that sure, mine would look like that too if I lived there. BUT HER HOUSE AND MY HOUSE ARE THE SAME HOUSE!

So I have decided that if we get word that we are staying here a third year, I am going to try to confront my fear of paint and add a little color to our lives.

This and that

Once again I'm approaching the end of the day without anything terribly blog-worthy. Hmmmmm . . . let's see . . .

Oh, I know! Somehow or another I am finding myself more and more involved in local education matters. First I got invited to attend a conference in Atlanta after Thanksgiving that's geared toward helping communities affected by BRAC meet the educational needs of military children during the transformation. Yesterday I went to a board of education meeting and heard all about how the budget has been slashed to the bone ("Global War on Terrorism: brought to you in part by the children of the people fighting it"). And today I went to my first meeting as the OCSC rep for the Ft. Knox School Transition Response Team. We heard a presentation from a couple of guys from the Department of Education about impact aid, which I know sounds terribly boring but was actually quite interesting.

Aside from that, I've been working on my current indexing project, moving kids around to all of their various activities, and trying to do some shopping for our holiday formal before the post-Thanksgiving crunch time starts and turns the malls into battlefields.

I've also been trying to clean up the cyber-clutter that I have strewn about between 2 computers. Tonight I rescued some really old files that were stuck on old-fashioned floppy disks. Sadly, most items were unsalvageable, but I found a cute old picture of the kids:



Mike is 6 in that photo; Annabelle is 3. I have no brilliant ideas for a Christmas photo this year, and I'm wondering if I could just recycle this one. Probably not.

One interesting note: Shortly after Annabelle came out of her cast, Mike fell off his bunk-bed ladder and broke HIS arm. We were well known in the casting room, which really isn't a position you want to be in as a parent.

From the archives

Today has been busy but not terribly blog-worthy. Here I am with only 4 hours left before midnight, and I feel a mild sense of panic that I might not get my post in for the day. I've decided therefore to tap the archives. If you were reading the San Antonio Express News back on September 29, 2002, you've already read this, so feel free to move on to another blog:

Schools churn out reward junkies
Irony is at work in our public schools. Numerous studies show that when you offer children rewards (such as stickers and candy) for important behaviors and values (such as reading or good citizenship), you get incredibly good results - in the short run. Over time, however, outside rewards actually diminish the likelihood of the desired behavior continuing.

Yet our schools are hooked on the myth that if they just toss out more pizza, more candy, more stickers, they will create children who naturally do all the things we want them to do. Instead, they destroy inner motivation and risk turning children into reward junkies.

My daughter attends second grade in an exemplary-rated, Blue Ribbon school. Last year I saw Popsicles handed to children for parent participation in PTA; stickers doled out for good behavior; ice cream traded for art contest entries; cookies and candy offered to promote recycling; and pizza and other prizes for reading.

Food is a popular motivator in our school. After all, what child doesn't enjoy pizza, cookies and candy? But if stickers and gold stars are potentially damaging to a child's natural enthusiasm for a task, food rewards are even worse, for they mess with how children view food.

Here in San Antonio (named America's seventh fattest city by Men's Fitness magazine), we worry about the nutritional value of school lunches. We fret over the presence of soda machines on campuses. Our mayor wants us to transform this fat city into a fit city.

Yet we have no qualms about teaching our children that food - especially junk food - is what you get when you're really, really good.

When rewards fail to achieve our desired goals, we flip to the other side: punishment. What can you do now that you can't send a misbehaving child to the principal's office for a paddling? You take away recess! Carbs for good behavior; inactivity for bad.

In our school, second-graders receive stickers for doing their homework. They also know that "failure to complete or return homework will result in the loss of Friday's recess."

I want my child to do her homework. I want her to do it because the homework is a meaningful part of her educational experience and because she enjoys learning. I don't want her to do it to get a sticker or "earn" the chance to run with her friends in the fresh air for 20 minutes.

Children should behave because it's right and because it feels good to get along in one's community. If a child misbehaves repeatedly, it's not because of insufficient stickers or an excess of recess. We are fools to think that these manipulators will solve the problem.

Until we stop treating our children as raw material to be molded into a superior product, we will continue to miss the boat in a very tragic way. And all the exemplary ratings and Blue Ribbons in the world can't change that.

Bonnie Taylor, a stay-at-home mother, runs a free-lance indexing and editing business. She is the author of "Education and the Law: A Dictionary."

If you're very, very good, one day I will tell you all the details that led up to my little temper tantrum in the newspaper. I might even give you a cookie. But you have to be good.

It's raining cats and dogs

Well, mostly just dogs. Cats seem to have the good sense to stay in when it's raining, but not dogs! Still, doesn't Ginger look cute in her little rain jacket?



We always stop on our walks to say hello to this purple plastic dog:



Without fail, Ginger sniffs his purple plastic butt and never seems disappointed that it smells more like plastic than butt. I guess it's the polite thing to do.

The gluten curse is broken!

Last winter I started getting homesick for Germany, and I found myself missing Brötchen in particular. I decided to try baking some myself, and, well, let's just say things didn't go very well.

The first batch refused to rise at all and came out of the oven as pale as they went in. If you threw one of these at somebody, you could do some serious damage:



Not to be deterred, I made a second batch. These rose and rose and rose and then fizzled. They came out of the oven small yet surprisingly edible:



We decided that if Brötchen is merely the German diminutive of Brot (bread), then what I had created were actually Brötchenchen (really small Brötchen). There you go, Germany--no need to thank me for the new word.

A few months later I tried my hand at Indian naan bread. I must have used a recipe for non-bread, however, because this . . . substance . . . was not any sort of bread at all.

Last night, however, I got inspired to try making my mother-in-law's pumpkin bread, which is one of Annabelle's favorite foods. (Well, actually, I got inspired on Saturday but realized I didn't have 3 loaf pans. I bought those on Sunday and started measuring ingredients, only to realize that I didn't have enough sugar. Bought sugar yesterday and tried again. I am nothing if not tenacious.)

I am pleased to report that it worked! Annabelle declared it to be as good as "the real thing," although I think next time I will cut the cooking time a bit. My new non-stick loaf pans tended to scorch the bottoms.

Care to join us in some pumpkin bread?

Mimmy Taylor's Pumpkin Bread

4 cups plain flour
3 cups sugar
1.5 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinammon
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1.5 tsp salt
1 cup nuts (optional--I didn't put in nuts)

Sift dry ingredients together in large bowl. Make a well and pour in:

1 cup vegetable oil
1 lb or 2 cups pumpkin
1 cup cold water

Mix well. Add 4 eggs, one at a time. Bake one hour at 350 degrees in 3 loaf pans.

My new addiction

Thanks to my invisible friend Deana for introducing me to TheFunniest.info. Basically, you get to vote for the funnier of 2 images . . . over and over and over again. Every few minutes, the server updates the list of winning images, which you can view here. Here are a couple of my favorites:





The list of winners changes all the time, so check back often!

Who's a daddy's girl?

Fred can no longer sit down for a quick hand of computer solitaire without a puppy jumping up in his lap:



This cracks me up, because when I sit down at the same computer, she either curls up by my feet or goes into her kennel. She never even tries to get in my lap.

Then again, I can take the kids to the pool and not get wet. If Fred is on the scene, however, his presence in the water is mandatory, and there is much whining and moaning until he jumps in.

Face it, Fred--you're a giant softie, and the kids and the dog have your number!

The details

Sorry to drop the library-school bomb without any details last night. I was in a panic that I might not have anything to blog for yesterday (Annabelle and I spent the whole day shopping, which was fun but not really blog-worthy), so I just shared the news without stopping to think that it might raise a few questions.

Basically, ages ago I got to be friends with the reference librarians at my law school and quickly decided that they had the best jobs in the place. Once I got my law degree, I kept thinking, "I should have gone to library school."

It is really hard though to go to school when you're chasing babies and moving every other year, so I put my interest in library science on the back burner and focused on other things. The "babies" are requiring less and less chasing these days, and now through the miracle of the internet, you can go to school without ever leaving your house.

Fred will hit 20 years active duty this January, and while we have no immediate plans for him retiring, we are starting to have a lot of conversations about what we might like to do when we grow up. During the course of these conversations, I realized that I still would like to get my MLS, so I ordered copies of my transcripts and dropped an application with FSU, one of several institutions that offer their MLS program entirely over the internet. (Thank goodness I still had a record of my GRE scores from October of 1986!) They were crazy enough to accept me, so I'm planning to start in the spring with just a couple of classes.

Sh! Sh! Sh!

Don't mind me. I'm just practicing for my future career. I got a letter yesterday from Florida State University that starts:

Dear Ms. Taylor:

On behalf of the Admissions Committee for the graduate program in Information Studies, it is my pleasure to welcome you to our community of scholars for the Spring Term, 2007.

I'm going to be a librarian! More details to follow later . . .

No more tin grin

Annabelle has complete phase 1 of her orthodontic work and was thrilled to chew a piece of legal chewing gum for the first time in 6 months today.

9:45 a.m.--



10:00 a.m.--



Now she's in a retainer while we wait for her to move on to phase 2.

Beginning to look a lot like Christmas

I didn't stay up last night to watch the election returns come in. I thought about it, but then I remembered the election 2 years ago: I was full of hope and did stay up all night, so the next day, not only was I disappointed but I also physically felt like crap. Last night I turned off the TV at 10:30 and hoped for the best.

This morning when I woke up it felt like Christmas, back in the day when Santa was a bad-ass and could leave you a lump of coal as easily as he might leave you a pony or an easy-bake oven. I went to the computer and signed on with some trepidation to see what would be waiting beneath the tree.

Lo and behold, it was the political equivalent of an easy-bake oven (which I desperately longed for but was never allowed to have, no matter how much I begged, because I was never "old enough"). What a great way to start the day!

I headed up to Louisville to do a little shopping, so I spent most of the day in a news blackout. Imagine my shock and awe when I got home and checked the headlines and saw that Donald Rumsfeld had upgraded my easy-bake oven to a pony.

Yes, Virginia, there IS a Santa Claus!

I love me some Keith Olbermann

Watch this and then go vote:



If Keith can't convince you, maybe Jimmy can:

This post brought to you by Panera

It is all Gretchyn's fault. About a year ago, she happened to mention to me that Panera makes really good hot chocolate. I filed that nugget of information away in the dark recesses of my brain but didn't think too much about it, as I didn't have a Panera anywhere near me.

Well, guess what came to Elizabethtown this summer? Yup, Panera.

So Saturday night, Fred and I came here for supper with Annabelle, and it was all just soooo good. I had half a roast-beef-and-cheddar sandwich and a cup of French onion soup and thought while I was at it, I should try the hot chocolate to see if it's as good as Gretchyn says.

Oh. My. God. It's so good. I mean really, really good.

So then yesterday, Fred and I went to Target and drove by Panera, and we stopped for coffee for Fred and hot chocolate and a croissant for me.

Now here it is Monday. I woke up thinking of this hot chocolate. I really need to go to Target again, but I knew I wouldn't be able to resist stopping at Panera. I IMed Gretchyn and told her how she had ruined my life, and she told me I should go get me some hot chocolate, so here I am. Best of all Panera has free wi-fi, so I've got my hot chocolate, my croissant, and my beloved computer:



I have decided that I am moving in to this nice corner booth. Please forward my mail. Fred, kids, I'm going to miss you guys. Blame Gretchyn.

Ginger takes a bath

Ginger was starting to smell, well, kind of like a dog. So she had her first bath today. Here she is during the bath:



And here she is immediately after:



Clean puppy!

Run, Forrest Mike, run!

Mike and I spent the afternoon up at McNeely Park in Louisville for the final cross-country meet of the year. Here are a couple of pictures of Mike with some of his teammates:





Mike's time for today's hilly 3.1 miles was 26 minutes and 30 seconds, which is such a tremendous improvement over his first meet of the season--32 minutes and 36 seconds on flat ground. The last dozen yards were kind of tense, as this kid from Glasgow tried desperately to overtake Mike. He managed to close the gap a bit after this picture was taken, but Mike definitely crossed the finish line first:

My boring day

When I first started my old blog, I was initially hesitant to give my posts titles. I figured the blog was like a diary, and I worried that titles might inhibit me from writing. Either the pressure of coming up with a catchy title would be too much, or I might worry that what I had to report for that day wasn't worthy of a title. Today would definitely be one such day, but I have promised to write every day this month, so this is what you get.

Fred has been TDY since Wednesday, so I had the pleasure of taking Ginger out for her pre-dawn potty break. And her post-breakfast potty break. I would have gotten the noontime one and possibly the late afternoon one as well, but Annabelle was home from school today "sickish." I figured the fresh air would do her good, so she got those. She and I did the post-supper walk together just a little while ago, and I'll go walk Ginger around the house at around 11 tonight before I go to bed. Fred usually takes her out around 10, but I'm pushing it late in hopes that she'll let me sleep a little later in the morning. One can dream.

Aside from dog-walking, I also worked on my current indexing project today; got my nails done; bought sour cream for the PTO's baked potato bar tomorrow; volunteered at the OCSC bazaar; and took the kids and one of Mike's friends out for Chinese food. See? I told you today was boring. Boring but pleasant. It doesn't make for the best writing, but it's pretty good living.

Perhaps a shoe intervention is in order?

Remember when I bought myself some new, used shoes off of ebay? I found the thrill to be so intoxicating that I just had to look for some more. Before I knew it, these babies were all mine:



Apparently these shoes inspire either great love or great hate. Obviously, I love them. If you don't, please don't tell me.

Then I grabbed a pair of black Mary Janes in the same style as the ones I got Annabelle this summer.



That's over $300 worth of shoes for about $50 plus shipping. How exciting!

You know what else is thrilling? Finding out that you live within an hour of the Zappos return outlet--THAT is thrilling! I haven't made my journey yet, but I plan on it. Heck, 28 new pairs of shoes, and I'll have something to write about for each day of this month.

I'm in

November is National Blog Posting Month--NaBloPoMo, for short. The mission is simple yet rather daunting at the same time: post daily on your blog for the entire month of November.

I used to write daily, or at least almost daily, but I have fallen out of the habit, Halloween notwithstanding. So I'm going to take part in NaBloPoMo in hopes of finding my blogging groove again.

It might not be pretty. There will probably be more photos of my feet, and I will likely be dressing the dog up here and there. I will definitely be dipping into my pre-blog archives for material.

There. That wasn't so hard. 29 more to go.