Saturday Adventures

A few weeks ago, Saturday evening rolled around. Bart and I were both glued to various computers and we'd spent most of the day inside. I had ventured out to the grocery store and the gym, but other than that, our entire day had been spent inside, in our tiny living room. 

"This is just sad," Bart said. "We live in Boston - people pay tons of money to come here on vacation, and we're sitting here piddling our weekends away." 

And so, we've decided we're going to be more proactive about making Saturdays fun, a time to get out and see our city and the surrounding areas. Of course, the very next Saturday, I was in Las Vegas and then on an airplane for hours and hours, not arriving home until late in the evening, so that weekend was kind of shot.

But yesterday! We would not be stopped. Not by the snow or the rain (in fact, even though it was 31 degrees and there were little snow flurries, Bart and I went for a nearly five mile walk through our neighborhood in the morning. It was delightful). 

We picked up our museum passes from the public library (this is one of the things I love about Boston - you can check out free or discounted museum/zoo/historical site tickets at most of the libraries in the area) and headed up to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. 

People, you know you have lived in Boston for a while when you are unreasonably thrilled by free, open, abundant parking. It was perhaps the highlight of my day. Perhaps my life is sad.

I loved going to the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library in Austin (I think I went at least four times while we lived there) and it was really fun to see how different the JFK one was. 

While the LBJ library focused a primarily on the events going on in the US and the world during LBJ's presidency, the JKF library started with a film about JKF's life (narrated mostly by him, which was awesome) and ended with his acceptance of the Democratic Party's nomination. 

Then, you went straight into the exhibit hall where you walked through a replica of a little downtown, with storefronts showing the kinds of appliances and other things that were popular during that time period, a campaign headquarters building, a studio where you could watch the Nixon/Kennedy debates (I have heard of these my whole life, but I don't think I've ever actually seen any footage of them), and then Walter Cronkite's desk with the state by state results of the election. It was beautifully done.

Then you went into a big open area where you could watch his inaugural address, before you were ushered into what looked like the White House. There was a long hallway with various rooms off it (one to watch press conferences in, another with gifts from different countries, one about the space program, one about the effort involved in writing his inaugural address, another one about his brother's role as attorney general, etc). 

The part that surprised me the most was that when you left the White House section, there was a long hallway painted dark blue with the date of his assassination on the wall. That was it. No other information whatsoever about his death. Frankly, if you didn't know JFK had been killed, you probably wouldn't have had any idea why the exhibit came to such a brief stop. I assume the idea was that they wanted the museum and library to focus on his life and his accomplishments, rather than his death. 

Bart and I both commented how well designed the exhibits were - not too much information overload, but enough that you could really learn a lot. At the end of the exhibits, there is a big atrium that looks over the harbor and the Boston skyline with a giant American flag hanging over the top. 

And then, we went to lunch at Five Guys. The night before, we'd been with some friends and they'd mentioned how much they liked it. I'd heard about it through the blogosphere, so I was instantly on board when Bart said, on our way home, "We should go to 'Five Guys Named Mo' tomorrow for lunch." After I stopped laughing myself sick over the fact that he truly thought the name was "Five Guys Named Mo," I agreed. 

It was not a mistake. This picture is making me hungry. 

Anyway, despite the surprising amount of effort it took to just force ourselves to get out the door, it was a delightful afternoon together and fun to see new things in the area. Now to decide what to do next Saturday. . .

Tell Me What to Read: Round 9

I'm feeling good this month because not only am I making good progress through Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede (the winner for February) and should be done by the end of the week, but because I ALSO read two other books suggested for this round: Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer and Bloody Jack: Being An Account Of The Curious Adventures Of Mary Jacky Faber, Ship's Boy by L.A. Meyer.

Never expect such awesomeness from me again.

So, tell me what you've got!

Here's how it goes:

1. Comment with the title of one book you think I should read (any book you want). One title only, please, lest my brain explode.
2. I'll select one comment at random and announce it on the blog later next week.
3. On the off-chance that I've already read the book you select, I'll contact you and ask for a follow-up suggestion (make sure there is a way to contact you either by blog or email).
4. I'll get a copy of the book and read it by the end of March.
5. I'll write a review of it here. Even if I hate the book, I will not hate you.

Life As We Knew It series by Susan Beth Pfeffer

8 of 10: This YA trilogy about the world being significantly altered by an asteroid hitting the moon is a little bit like watching a train wreck; it's horrific, but you can't look away. And you won't forget it either - the characters and the storyline are so real and so memorable, without being over the top.

I have mentioned before that I really love dystopian books (ones like The Hunger Games or Uglies or The Giver where something has completely changed the face of the world (war, disease, etc) and an alternate kind of society has sprung up). This series would fall into that category, but it's different because, unlike the three books I just mentioned, you see the recognizable world fall apart, rather than just the aftermath and rebuilt society.

The very short synopsis is that the moon is hit by a very large asteroid and is knocked closer to the earth. Enough closer that the tides are thrown completely off, the seasons change dramatically, and earthquakes, hurricanes, tidal waves, and volcanoes ravage many parts of the world. It's all very cheerful as you can imagine.

The first book, Life As We Knew It, is written in diary form by teen-aged Miranda. Her family lives in a small town in rural Pennsylvania. They do okay even as food run short because of her mom's quick thinking early on when they purchase hundreds of dollars worth of non-persishable foods. The heat and electricity shuts off pretty quickly, coming on every few weeks for a few minutes or maybe, if they're lucky, for a few hours. School comes to a screeching halt, and Miranda's life, once full of friends and school and sports is now mostly doing laundry by hand, spending the days in one room of her house with her mother and sibilings trying to keep warm, and wondering if she'll ever go to college, have a real boyfriend, get a job, etc.

The second book, The Dead and the Gone, is actually the one I read first, about a year ago, and covers the same time period but this time from Alex's point of view, a teenager living in New York City. His dad is out of the country when the moon is hit and his mom is at work; months go by and they never hear from either of them, so Alex must assume they are dead and take over the care of his two younger sisters as their world falls apart. Things in the city are exceedingly bleak, as disease spreads rapidly in the highly-populated areas, there aren't as many natural resources, and bodies pile up in the streets. In all honesty, having read this one first, Life As We Knew It seemed downright cheery in comparison.

The third book (and I believe the last of the series) comes out at the beginning of April and is titled This World We Live In. In it, Alex (spoiler! He doesn't die in the second book!) ends up in Pennsylvania staying with Miranda's family (mega-spoiler! she doesn't die in the first book (as if the diary format didn't tip you off to that)) and, of course, there is some romance that goes on there. And, wow, after the total tragedy-fest of the first two, I felt like I deserved some romance. But some good kissing doesn't change the fact that food is still unbelievably scarce, that it could run out at any moment, that your family still needs to be taken care of, and that there is no certainty about what the future might hold or if there will even be a future for anyone, even those who have managed to survive for over a year since the moon was struck.

I think what makes this book so scary is that the problem is irreversible. In The Giver, Jonas can hope that there are other communities out there that don't function like his. Katniss, in The Hunger Games, can attempt to take down the Capitol. There's not really a good way to set the moon back in its original orbit. The only option is to deal with the changed world. And it's a permanent change. Freaky.

I love the author, though, for not going for the shock factor. Terrible things happen, yes, in all three of the books, but I never felt like she was going trying to milk it - the characters dealt with things in ways that I felt were very realistic. Sometimes, even when the world is falling apart, Miranda can't help but get into a yelling match with her mom. Sometimes Alex, despite his fierce protectiveness of his little sisters, is so angry at the world for ripping away his dreams of future success and achievement, that he takes it out on them.

This is the kind of book that might have you buying up every can of beans at your grocery store after you finish, and, well, yes, they are kind of depressing. The idea of the world practically ending, while you watch your neighbors die of exposure, disease, and starvation and wonder if you are not far behind is not exactly a Lifetime Movie special, but it's also strangely uplifting too. It's amazing how resilient people can be, how much they can pull together when things get bad, and how grateful you can be for a can of pineapple when you thought you were going to starve to death.

P.S. I listened to the first two and while I heard some complaints from others about the narration of Miranda's book, it didn't bother me at all. In fact, I found myself looking for excuses to listen to it (the laundry has never been so well-managed in my house). The Dead and the Gone, however, I really disliked, and it was only the trainwreck nature of the story itself that kept me from giving up quickly. Frankly, at least for that one, I'd stick with a print version.

Life As We Knew It and The Dead and the Gone both borrowed from my local library. This World We Live In read as an advance copy from ALA Midwinter conference.

People Who Do

My mom and I were talking recently about some fairly meaningless things and she said, "I have lots of categories where I feel like people fall on one side or another. One of the categories I have is. . . "

Because of what we'd been talking about, I knew exactly what she was going to say: "People who use toaster ovens and people who don't."

My family falls decidedly on the "people who don't" side of the toaster oven category. My parents have never owned one and I remember vividly the first time I saw one when we stayed in a condo in California when I was around 11 or 12 (and I had to ask what it was).

And then, when Bart and I were registering before our wedding, he said, "I'd like to register for a toaster oven." I would never even CONSIDERED registering for one; I hardly even knew what you might use it for. Did we eat enough bagels to justify having one? Did it do anything besides that? Wasn't that what a TOASTER was for?

One of Bart's uncles and aunts kindly bought it for us and Bart declared, several times, that it was his very. favorite. gift. A toaster oven! I was floored.

And then our first apartment had what was possibly the world's worst oven. The very first thing I tried to cook was banana bread and it rose VERY fast and then spilled all over the floor of the oven and never cooked through. (There were tears). Out came the toaster oven and I used it exclusively the whole time we lived there as a regular oven. And then in Texas, we kept it on the counter because I could either use TWO ovens at the same time or I could avoid turning on the regular oven and making the kitchen approximately the same temperature as Hades. I was suddenly a "person who uses a toaster oven."

Since this conversation, I've thought a lot about the categories I mentally note but have never really consciously thought about: People who chew gum and people who don't. People who listen to the radio and people who don't. People who go barefoot when possible and people who don't. These categories aren't in judgemental ways - more just a way to keep track of people. An "oh, yes, she knows something about cooking because she is a 'person who makes dinner on a regular basis.'"

I have amused myself all week thinking of the many many categories I have for all different areas of life. Maybe there is a "People who categorize others and people who don't" category. If so, I'm on the "People who do" side.

The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett

Kelly is a good friend of mine from library school. We had only limited interaction in actual school, but after she graduated, we started talking online a lot about job hunting, YA books we loved, and my inability to complete some of my TA responsibilities without significant help from her (I was the TA that replaced her when she finished up at UT).

She vigorously promoted The Magician's Assistant from the very first month of Tell Me What to Read (if at first you don't succeed, and all that).

All of which is to say, I desperately wanted to like this book. And that last sentence probably will let you know that I didn't.

Kelly and I have a lot of overlap in our reading tastes, but she often enjoys quirky books more than I do (like How To Say Goodbye In Robot which she loved and which made me want to go take up binge-drinking). However, because Kelly is both mature and a librarian, she didn't take my non-love of this book personally, because she realizes, correctly, that it has nothing to do with her, and eveyrhting to do with my personal reading tastes. Much as our friendship survived when she barely made it through Jellicoe Road alive after I praised it up and down as the best book ever that everyone should read right now, amen.

Ahem. The actual book?

Sabine worked with Parcifal, a magician, for more than 20 years as his assistant. It was love at first sight for her - Parcifal was charming, glamorous and handsome. Tragically for Sabine, he was also gay. They were always close, though, and when he gets sick and knows he only has a few years left to live, they marry (I was never exactly sure why that was, except maybe that she'd be the legal beneficiary of his estate, etc).

After his death, Sabine receives a shock when Parcifal's lawyer reveals that Parcifal's name is actually Guy Feterra and contrary to what he's told her for 20 years, his family is not dead, all members killed in a long-ago car accident, but rather alive and well in, of all the non-glamorous places, Nebraska.

Sabine, still broken-hearted over Parcifal's death, finds herself desperate to know more about this man she believed she knew backward and forward, and so finds herself first meeting the family and then going out to Nebraska to spend weeks with his mother and his sisters and nephews. It is, of course, all very bizarre, and Sabine is quick to recognize the absurity of the stituation, but also unnerved by the secrets of Parcifa's past, especially his relationship with his father.

Kelly asked me afterwards if, even if I didn't enjoy the book, I didn't think the writing was incredibly descriptive. She was right and, frankly, I think that was the problem for me. The descriptions of bright, sunny LA depressed me to no end and then snowy, forsaken Nebraska depressed me even more. It was too real, too sharp, too bleak.

 It kind of dragged a little for me too - it seemed like not all that much happened and I never had any idea if it was ever going to go anywhere.

And yet, I am extremely likely to read whatever Kelly recommends to me next, just because most of the time, our taste overlaps. And when it doesn't, we can tell each other so. A happy librarian ending if there ever was one, I'd say.

Middle Names

My two sisters and I all have middle names. In fact, Landen has two of them (I have a secret hope she marries someone with a hyphenated last name and adds it to her own so that her legal name consists of six names. Is that mean?).

My mom and her sister both don't have a middle name, but it was years before I found out that it was considered fairly standard not to give girls middle names (the horror!). My mom obviously made up for it with us, although I don't know if my aunt's three girls have middle names or not.

Bart's sister does not have a middle name, which I remember her mentioning early on really bothered her (especially since both of her brothers did (and when Bart's mom remarried, both of his stepdad's daughters had middle names)). His sister now has three daughters and all of them have a middle name.

I know that sometimes the rationale for not giving a girl a middle name is that eventually she'll get married and take her husband's name and then she can use her maiden name as her middle name, but I do not buy this story. Also, many last names do not really make for awesome middle names (my mom's maiden name is very long and hard to spell).

Both Merrick and I dropped our maiden names when we got married and kept our middle names (after all the effort my parents went to in picking names that go well with our first names, who are we to dump them so cavalierly?). Who knows what Landen will do when she marries Mr. Smirken-Tolens-Jones-Smith?

You may have guessed (correctly) that I am a firm believer in middle names and that I have not once, for one moment in my life, considered leaving my daughters with only a first and a last name. I am an equal opportunity namer - all my children will have a middle name.

Candor by Pam Bachorz

8 of 10: Candor was my perfect airplane book; a quick read, immediately engrossing, and a terrific alternate reality.  

Because I read a tremendous number of book blogs, I sometimes request a new book that has gotten a lot of buzz and by the time it finally arrives at the library, I have completely forgotten what it's about or who recommended it in the first place. Candor was one of those books. When I pulled it out of my backpack on the plane flight on Sunday afternoon, I had no idea what the basic gist of the plot was.

Oscar Banks' father started a new private community in Florida a few years earlier, the town of Candor. It was advertised as the perfect family town, where things are safe, where people know their neighbors, where your troubled teen will find a wholesome life, etc. It quickly took off and now the waiting list to get a house in Candor is over two years.

The reason Candor is so popular is because of the subliminal messages that Oscar's dad has playing constantly. They say things like "The great are never late" or "Always obey your parents" or (my personal favorite), "Only husbands and wives kiss." When opportunities to disobey those rules come up, those messages pound at your subconscious making it extremely hard to resist doing what the messages want you to do.

They are extremely effective - most teens have their body piercings out, their grades up, and their rebellion curbed within just a few weeks, falling in to become a model citizen.

Oscar, who saw his father quietly making all these plans, was on to it quickly and started making his own recordings to combat the messages his father is playing. Not content with that, Oscar sees a money making scheme and starts helping rich kids escape before they are brainwashed into submission as well.

Oscar has a girlfriend, a former teen beauty queen who was so insanely competitive that someone competing against her committed suicide and blamed her for driving her to it. Oscar is always amused to watch her polite, message-induced side compete with her own rather horrible personality. The message-induced side always wins out, but that inner self is fighting hard.

And then Nia arrives in town. She's stronger than most of the kids that move there and it takes a long time for the messages to start sinking in. Oscar is conflicted about whether to help her escape or to keep her there near him as he begins to develop feelings for her.

There are so many clever and creepy parts of this book; I couldn't read fast enough and I just couldn't see where this was going to end. I loved it. It reminded me to some extent of The Giver or The Hunger Games, where the world is so controlled, but of course this takes place in the present and in the United States.

Doctors

Thank you all for your concern about the doctor - I am glad we can all agree she had the bedside manner of a pinto bean (and I didn't even mention the part where she never once acknowledged Bart in the room; she didn't even look at him). Let me tell you, I was pretty steamed by the time we walked out of there. I am surprised my eyes are not permanently stuck looking into my skull from the eye rolling I did.

The good news is, she's not my regular doctor. The office I go to doesn't do ultrasounds, so they send their clients to a clinic downtown (believe me, I'll be telling them on my next appointment how unimpressed I was by them and how several other women I know have been similarly unimpressed). I will very likely never see that woman again.

My own doctor is delightful. When I went in to hear the heartbeat a few weeks ago, I told the doctor I wanted to call Bart and let him hear it, since he couldn't come to the appointment. She not only quickly agreed, but then held the phone for me right near the microphone so he could hear it more clearly. Afterwards, when I thanked her for letting me call him and letting him listen, she said, "Oh, it was fun for me too!"

And my midwife? I liked her instantly. She was so pleasant, so quick to answer any questions, offer advice about various genetic testing, but also not be pushy either way, and very open to different options for labor and delivery. I loved her and so did Bart.

And of COURSE the important thing is that the baby is healthy. I would rather have that than know the gender of the baby every day of the week. But once they said everything else looked good and I didn't need to worry about it, well, then, I'd really like to know what my baby is going to be.

But, you know, not enough to pay $70 at one of those 3D ultrasound places. Because my cheapness is just one more thing that pregnancy has not changed even a little bit.

Very Good and a Little Bit Bad

Yesterday was supposed to be the day I wrote a post saying, "It's a ......" Our ultrasound was scheduled for Friday.

Let me cut to the chase of the story. The very good news: Our baby appears to be healthy and have all the necessary limbs and organs. The semi-bad news: We still have to call it an "it" because that baby would not uncross its ankles and the doctor exerted about 0.000001% effort to get it to move or even get a better view.

The tech, who was a delightful and very pleasant woman, tried pretty hard to tell and she said based on the one shot the doctor got of the baby, she was 75% certain it was a girl, but there was no telling. We ran into the doctor in the hallway when we were leaving and I asked her if she thought it was a girl too, based on the image she took. Her delightful, heart-warming response? "Oh, I didn't even really look at that image."

The day of, I was really bothered not to know, but now I'm kind of resigned to possibly not knowing until the baby is born. Plus, I think it's a girl.

In other news, I'm in Las Vegas for the week, celebrating the fact that Massachusetts gives both a week long winter break in February and a week long spring break in April. Let us all rejoice.

People, I have never loved Las Vegas like I'm loving it now. I wore a t-shirt yesterday. We walked four miles outside. My mom and I ate lunch on the patio. This WARM and sunny weather thing is nearly killing me with its fabulousness. Bart will be lucky if I get on that plane this weekend to go back to the snow and the cold.

Library Lessons

After Christmas vacation, I wanted to do something fun with the fourth and fifth grade classes before we plunged headlong into research (also, I wanted to procrastinate the inevitable moaning and groaning that would accompany my announcement that no, they could not use Tony Hawk or Michael Jackson  or Adam Sandler as the topic of their research project (that moment has now come and gone and, as predicted, the whining; it was prodigious)).

I landed upon the idea of doing a mock Caldecott panel (the Caldecott award, as you probably know, is awarded for the best illustration). By these grades, the kids are almost never looking at picture books, certainly not of their own volition, so I thought it'd change things up a bit.

I introduced the Caldceott medal and how the committee works, showed them some of the more popular winners ("Make Way for Ducklings") and some that have not really stood the test of time ("Animals of the Bible," anyone?), talked about how the definition of the award can vary a great deal (they loved seeing "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" nearly as much as I love overusing parentheses), and showed them some of the books that were getting a lot of buzz as possible winners for 2010 (happily, "The Lion and the Mouse" was among those I showed).

I then divided the class into 5-6 groups, handed them each a stack of books that had, at one point, won the Caldecott gold medal and had them decide as a group which one they would have picked if they'd been on the committee. Then each group got up and showcased their choice. Afterwards, everyone voted on their favorite book from the 5-6 finalists and after they'd checked out their books, I announced the winner.

It was really fun to see these kids pouring over the books, debating the merits of the artwork, trying to decide if funny meant better, and complaining that they couldn't pick a winner ("You and the Caldecott committee both," I told them, "You have to pick one"). I mean, these kids were really into this.

David Wiesner's books (especially "Tuesday,") and Chris Van Allsburg's books won over and over again, but some times the overall winner would surprise me. When "Kitten's First Full Moon" won by a landslide in one class, my eyes may have bugged out a little.

The kids kept asking, "Can we check these books OUT?!" I assured them that they could indeed and spent the whole week trying to scrounge up more winning books so I wouldn't have to tell any of them no.

Best of all, I can't count on two hands the number of students that came in for class two weeks later, eagerly asking which book had won, and then freely giving me their opinions about which books should have won.

They may have forgotten the awesomeness of it all, now that I've crushed their dreams of doing a six-slide presentation about Jessica Simpson or the Jonas Brothers, but I have not. It was a major, major success.

Age

As I'd rather suspected might be the case, everyone at school thinks I look super young (thank heavens I work in an elementary school and not a high school).

The custodians at both schools love to tease me about being nineteen. One mom told me her daughter came home the first month of school and said, "The new librarian must be REALLY smart to have finished college while she's still in high school."

On the other hand, I started to wonder if all my commuting into the sun both ways was starting to take a toll on me (hello, squinting), when a second grader asked how old I was last week. I asked her what her guess was and she stared at me a while and then said, "Forty?"

Hmm, time to break out the anti-aging cream, I think.

Q & A

Because I care, here are some baby/pregnancy questions that I thought I'd answer (also, today the snowstorm that has been blasting DC all weekend has turned its attention toward Boston and school let out at noon today, so I have some time. Tomorrow is predicted to be a snow day).

Getting pregnant has not changed the basic way I function; namely, approximately ten minutes after I took the pregnancy test and it came up positive, I walked down to the parking lot and tossed the test and the box into the dumpster. (No picture was taken of the test either).

Tomorrow, I'll be eighteen weeks along, so yes, we kept it a secret for a long time. I didn't really intend to keep it secret for that long, but when we went in at 11 weeks, they didn't even try to find a heartbeat, so I wanted to wait until we'd actually heard one which didn't happen until the 16 week mark.

And, and in all honesty, most major announcements are very easy for me to keep secret. I am horribly awkward at making announcements like that, and it's much easier for me just to say nothing. The few people I did tell before last week made my heart pound and I wanted to throw up. Yes, I really am that socially awkward.

Now that I'm nearly half-way along, I feel fine. I did have about five lousy weeks between Thanksgiving and New Years, but even that wasn't horrible and when I think about what people like Kayla and Kristi go through, I have no room to talk at all. Happily, Bart was out of town for much of it, and I could just eat cereal three times a day and go to bed early without feeling bad.

I'm just barely starting to show, but more in a "hmm, a few too many Valentine's candies?" kind of way, rather than a "whoa, hello, baby" sort of way. And even so, I don't think anyone would even think to ask yet, which is nice, because I have many months of school to go where I need to continue wearing dress clothing. I know many first-time moms are anxious to start showing, but I'll take all the time I can get still wearing my regular stuff.

Merrick and I are due fairly close together - in fact, she's 3 months to the day ahead of me. But that is happy coincidence, not the result of any kind of coordination. A few people have asked if I mind that she's having the first grandbaby, when I'm the oldest, but frankly, I feel nothing but relief that she's first; I am happy to not have the (all-in-my-head, I'm sure) pressure of being the very first, and I was glad our announcement was a little more low-key due to not being the first of its kind. Also, Merrick has been delightfully excited for us, rather than annoyed that we're sharing in her spotlight (or if she has felt that way, she's been insanely good at covering it up).

We do plan to find out the sex of the baby, and we've talked extensively about names for the last four and a half years. Happily, we both like the same kinds of names, although actual names themselves are far more difficult to settle on. I refuse to consider anything that has been in the top 1000 names in the Social Security database for the last 100 years, which makes things tricky, and Bart won't agree to any names that begin with the same letter as our last name (which is tragic, since I have not one, but TWO fabulous heartbreakingly awesome names that start with that letter that got an immediate kibosh). I won't, however, be using any of our kids names on the blog. But you can rest assured that none of our children will be named "Bart" or "Janssen," because I do not believe in naming children after your own self.

And the question that amused me the most: "Was this planned?" Yes. But even if it wasn't, I would never tell you so. But seriously, we've been married for close to five years, I'm 24 and Bart is almost 30, we've both completed master's degrees, and we have stable jobs. It's not like we're both 18 and just got back from our honeymoon. I wonder if this question is just because I have not alluded to planning to get pregnant at all either online or in person.

This is very long. I am not blessed with the gift of brevity.

My Life in France by Julia Child

7 of 10: If you're interested in Julia Child, you'll probably like My Life in France. It moves fairly quickly and has lots of interesting stories. Still, I found I didn't like Julia as much by the end of the book as I did after I saw the movie, Julie and Julia.

After seeing the movie, I was interested in reading Julia Child's book that the movie was based on. I hadn't liked Julie Powell's book all that much when I read it 3 years ago, but the movie charmed me, especially the Julia Child part.

The movie is fairly true to the story, so if you've seen it, you know basically how it's going to go in the book. Julia and her husband, Paul, move to Paris for a government assignment, she falls instantly in love with French food and she begins taking cooking classes at the Cordon Bleu. She gets recruited by two French authors to help them write a cookbook about French cooking for an American audience, since she is, in fact, American, and eventually ends up being the main author of that cookbook (or at least the one who gets all the fame in the US once it is finally published, which is a feat in and of itself).

I wasn't sure how much time the book would cover, since I knew they didn't live in France for all that long (less than ten years, I believe), but it spans around 30 years, because even after they  move back to Cambridge in the states, they maintain a small residence in Provance.

I think you really have to like food and be pretty interested in it to love this book because there is so much discussion of restaurant meals, the foods she makes in her classes at the Cordon Bleu, and the endless testing of recipes. It made me realize that, while I like to cook and to eat, I have no where near her enthusiasm for it. The idea of deboning and then stuffing and cooking TWO ducks in one afternoon (and then eating them both myself, eek) has no appeal to me. But then, French food, aside from the desserts and the pasteries, is not exactly my favorite cuisine either. Give me a good Thai curry any day of the week.

I listened to this on CD in the car, and I think that worked well for me because although the story moved quickly enough, I could definitely see it being a book I would read a few pages of and then not pick up again for a while, whereas I was pretty interested in it the whole time when it was just playing and I didn't have to stumble over all the French words.

One thing that kind of tainted the book for me, I think, was how sour Julia was toward her father. She and Paul were extremely liberal and her father was very conservative, and she let that almost completely anihilate her relationship with him. When he finally died, she said she just felt relieved. I don't doubt that he was difficult to deal with and didn't respect her political views as she might have wished, but the reoccuring discussion of what a pill he was seemed a bit unnecessary and just irriating after a while.

I didn't realize how recently this book was written - it only came out in 2006, so it's fairly new, written when Julia was a very old woman and published after her death.

Date Due Card

Thank you for your lovely congratulations. Aren't you all nice!?

I had seen a similar concept for birth announcements with the due date cards and wanted to replicate it when we announced to our parents that we were expecting. We no longer use due date cards in my school libraries, but we have stacks of unused ones from years ago when they did, and I meant to take one of those, but never remembered to actually put it in my bag, and thus we arrived home for Christmas without one.

The day we arrived at my parents house, we knew we wanted to tell them that night, so it was imperative that we somehow get our hands on a due date card. Thus, I invented a totally lame excuse to go to the local public library, and Bart, Crawford, and I set off (Crawford, of course, had no idea why I wanted to go to the library, and happily, he disappeared off to the fantasy section so I was free to skulk around as needed).

I went to the teen section and flipped through a few books, discovering, to my dismay, that the library no longer used due date cards. I mean, I didn't think they'd USE them, as automated systems have pretty much made them obsolete, but I thought they might still be in there.

I went to the non-fiction adult section and started flipping through books, realizing they too had no due date cards.

Next I went to the desk in the children's section and asked if they had any at all, but the lady told me that, no, we don't need them anymore because of the computers. I was getting a bit frantic (I could have made my own due date card, I suppose, but if you know me at all, you know my artistic skills are so abysmal it's almost amusing).

I found Bart and told him that they didn't use them any more and my only hope was to find a really really really old book that might still have one. We started pulling the oldest, most decrepit-looking books from the shelves we could find, and finally found one with a due date card glued in the front cover. But the bar code had been slapped right on top of it, so there was no real way to take the due date card off without causing mega problems.

Finally, we discovered a very old book about plant life in a specific region (can't even remember what now), and, lo and behold, it had a due date card in it. And no bar code on the top of it. As you will see below, the book appears not to have been checked out in over 20 years (the most recent date stamp being 1988), and I assume that because it was never taken out, no one every bothered pulling the due date card.

Bart coughed loudly while I carefully tore the card out, trying hard not to damage the fly leaf it was glued to (success!). Bart said, "Shouldn't you be morally opposed to this, what with being a librarian and all?" and yes, I probably should have been, but instead I was feeling exultant about not being thwarted by an automated world.

I stuffed the card in my pocket, we found Crawford, and all went merrily on our way home. I added our due date to the card, circled it in red, found an envelope in my mom's stationary collection, and we were ready.

It was probably defacement of public property and such, but I got what I wanted, plus a terrific story to boot. I can't complain.

Better Late Than Never

One of my 2009 goals was to be a better gift giver, and this past Christmas was quite a success, I thought, particularly because Bart and I really planned ahead and weren't frantically buying gifts at the last second. We had time to think about what to get various family members and I was really pleased with some of the things we chose.

But, without question, the gift we were most excited about (and which came as the biggest surprise to our families) was this one, which we gave to Crawford:

The Best Thing Ever

I've mentioned before that I like to listen to books on my iPod.

My mode has been to get books on CD from the library, load them on to iTunes and then upload them to my iPod (people always ask if that's legal - rest assured that I delete them when I'm done). This is a pretty good system, but it can be a little time intensive, what with the importing one CD at a time and then also trying to remember if you were on track A1 or A11 or C28b (hello, 21st century problems, lovely to see you).

Happily, I have found a new option (not that the CD method will be tossed out on its backside entirely). My library system used Overdrive Media, where there are hundreds of titles available for download straight onto your iPod. And these are legitimately awesome books too - new ones, YA ones, award winning ones, classics, children's books. It takes a fraction of the downloading time that manually importing CDs does and they go into the "Audiobook" section of your iPod which means that it bookmarks where you are in the book and you can return straight to it without searching after listening to something else (or, in my case, switching between two books).

I know what you're thinking. "Well, yes, Janssen, it's all well and good for YOU, since you clearly have the best library ever at your fingertips. But my library is the size of a postage stamp and is made out of discarded beer cans." Think again. I'm willing to bet you have access to such a system as well.

My friend Julie called a few weeks ago to ask about my audiobook listening and I asked her to tell me the name of her library. While she told me how tiny it was, I googled it and within seconds had discovered that her library had the same feature. With more titles, I noticed jealously.

The Provo library in Utah and the one I went to in Texas both use another version called "NetLibrary." Same basic idea. My parents' library system uses the same one I do (Overdrive Media).

The titles are checked out for only 2-3 weeks at a time, and only one person can have a book out at any one given moment, so you may have to place a request for it and wait for it to come in, but with so many titles, I never have trouble finding SOMETHING I want to listen to. And they are adding titles constantly.

Also, these are very fine recordings, the same as the ones you would get on an audio CD, not read by someone who doesn't actually read very well but is willing to do it for free.

I am rather addicted to browsing the website now, patrolling for new titles, putting items on hold, and listening to my currently checked-out titles as I fold the laundry or vacuum.

Check out your library and see if it offers this service (search for Overdrive Media Libraries by state here) I'll put money on 90% of your libraries doing just that (only a penny, though, because I am cheap).

The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Kleges

9 of 10: I loved The Green Glass Sea, another title from the Massachusetts Children's Book Award list. This is excellent historical fiction about the Manhatten Project, a topic there isn't a lot written about for kids. My students seem to be really interested in it too, with some encouragement.

Like much of the world, it seems, I have an interest in World War II. With two grandfathers that fought in the war (one as a bombardier and one in the navy), it might be hard not to. I've read a lot of historical fiction dealing with this time period (most recently Ten Cents a Dance), and this one is really a gem.

Dewey is nearly eleven, living with her grandmother in St. Louis, while her father is in Chicago doing war work. He was formerly a physics professor at Harvard, but once the war started up, the government recruited him to work on their projects.

Now Dewey's grandmother has suffered a stroke and so Dewey is being shipped off to live with her dad (to her delight). But instead of him showing up to take her back to Chicago with him, an army woman shows up and puts her on a train, bound for New Mexico, where, to her surprise, her father is.

She ends up at Los Alamos, a location that didn't even appear on maps in that time, and she is quickly enrolled in school and settles in to life there, delighted to be with her father on a daily basis, even if he sometimes doesn't come home until she's in bed.

No one, of course, talks about what everyone is working on, although the kids speculate endlessly about what "the gadget" might be. Dewey has always been a little bit of an outsider, content to work on her own inventions, especially since her leg, shorter than her other, requires her to wear an odd looking shoe and makes it hard for her to run quickly or participate in the games the other children play.  She doesn't mind the differences, though, and in Los Alamos, she finds a school where they allow her to skip about three grade levels in math, and the streets are full of professors from top universities and Nobel prize winners eat dinner at the same restaurant you do. It's kind of magical for Dewey.

Suze, on the other hand, who has TWO parents involved in the project, hates being in Los Alamos, especially because she hates her outsider status. She's just too big and bossy and all her attempts to fit in end up making her the point of ridicule. The idea of being even more on the outside by associating with Dewey is absolutely unappealing to her. And yet, association is forced when Dewey's dad has to go to Washington for an extended trip, and Dewey moves in with Suze's family.

The setting of this book was so real - you could just feel the dusty streets, the pounding sun in the summer, the hastily assembled housing for the families, and the old-timey feel of the general store where the kids assemble for cokes and ice cream on hot days.

It's always fun to read a book, I think, where you know more than the characters. You know, of course, what "the gadget" is and what it will be used for and how it will affect the outcome of the war.

The book itself didn't really make any judgments about the moral consequences of the bomb, but the discussion section had an interview with the author where she talked about Americans being the bad guys in the end [edited: she said Americans weren't the good guys]. I have to admit, this soured me just a little on the book. I mean, I think the dropping of the bombs was pretty terrible, of course, but I also had two grandfathers slated to be at the forefront of the Japanese invasion and the casualty predictions for such an invasion make it at least a very real possibility that, without the bombs, I wouldn't be sitting here right now. I, and my siblings and my parents, probably would never have been born.

All that considered, though, it's still a book I would recommend without hesitation.

The cover of the school's copy (a paperback) is, sadly, even less appealing than this one, which I think has prevented it from ever being checked out. I'm hoping it'll circulate pretty well now that I've introduced them to it.

Chocolate Happiness

Last year, I mentioned that we were pretty casual observers of Valentine's Day. We don't like to spend a lot of money or make a lot of effort.

We're sticking to our Valentine's Day schedule this year, which consists, in its entirety, of the following:

1) Dinner at a Thai restaurant (I swear, this is the best thing ever, as they are never crowded on Valentine's Day. Of course, this year, since the holiday falls on a Sunday, we'll be going Saturday night instead, so it's not like it even matters).
2) Homemade Chocolate dessert. Because, let us be honest with ourselves - Thai restaurants are not exactly known for their chocolate desserts. Also, for Bart, any dessert that is not chocolate, isn't really dessert.

So, here's where I ask for some help again (I know, it's just take, take, take over here). What chocolate dessert should I make for the holiday? Suggestions? Links? Pictures?

What I'm Going to Read: Round 8

People, there are some seriously good suggestions this month. Someday, when I run out of books to read, I'm just going to work my way through this list from top to bottom. The winner this month is Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede recommended by Smalldog.

Also, I have not finished last month's book, but I am working on it and I'll be done soon. Fortunately, the person who recommend it was Kelly and one of the main reasons I'm behind on the book is because I've been plowing through my ALA books to send to her, so I'm hopeful she'll cut me a little slack (right, Kelly?)

And the rest of the books:

• One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus (Jle122)
• Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese (Shelah and Melanie)
• The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin (Melinda and RA)
• The Dark Hills Divide by Patrick Carman (Carly Jane)
• A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life by Donald Miller (Karina)
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte by Emily Bronte (P)
• Gregor The Overlander by Suzanne Collins (Bart)
• The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson (Stacy)
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (Saskia)
• A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry (Megan B.)
• Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer (Jessica)
• Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata (Jenny)
• Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Shelly)
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (Lacie)
• The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey (Megan)
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck (Merry and Mom)
• Fablehaven by Brandon Mull (Norby Family & Em and Trev)
• Zeitoun by Dave Eggers (Jess)
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel (Sherry)
• Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen and Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach (Rachel)
• Black Angels by Linda Beatrice Brown (Melissa)
• Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner (Zillah)
• The Unlikely Romance of Kate Bjorkman by Louise Plummer (Mary)  
• What Dreams May Come by Richard Matheson (Kayla)
• Death with Interruptions by Jose Saramago (Yankee Girl)
• The Road Home by Ellen Emerson White (Angiegirl)
• The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb (Bean)
• The Rag and Bone Shop by Robert Cormier (Angela Noelle)
• Jitterbug Perfume (Peaceful Reader)
• Skin Deep by E.M. Crane (Chrissie)
• Bloodroot by Amy Greene (Alison)
• The Great Starvation Experiment: Ancel Keys and the Men Who Starved for Science by Todd Tucker (Poodle)
• Zen And The Art Of Faking It by Jordan Sonneblick (Katie)
• Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood (Amy Sorenson)
• My Life in France by Julia Child (Tara)
• Conspiracy 365 January by Gabrielle Lord (Mary)
• The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin (Kristin)
• Bloody Jack: Being An Account Of The Curious Adventures Of Mary Jacky Faber, Ship's Boy by L.A. Meyer (Chelsea)
• Storm Front by Jim Butcher (Tiny Little Librarian) 

 Also, I have a better showing this month, happily, on books I've already read from the list:

• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte by Emily Bronte
• Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer (listening to it right now on my iPod)
• My Life in France by Julia Child (on the second to last CD in the car) 
• The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin 
• Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata

AND, I have two of these books on CD sitting in my car just WAITING to be read: 

• Zen And The Art Of Faking It by Jordan Sonneblick (Katie)
• Bloody Jack: Being An Account Of The Curious Adventures Of Mary Jacky Faber, Ship's Boy by L.A. Meyer

Frankly, I never thought I'd be so proud of myself for having read (most of) four books.