Diamonds and Firewood

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Nope, not ebony and ivory, but rather diamonds and firewood. That describes Doc. B. and me this weekend (and most days?). Doc. B. is off on a camping trip today while I’m meeting my social worker friend at Solomon Brothers to have my ring and Doc. B.’s grandmother’s ring checked and cleaned. While I’m doing that, social worker will be taking in the view from the 17th floor of Tower Place in Buckhead. Oh, and she’ll be looking for an engagement ring to which she hopes to direct her boyfriend.

Doc. B. is checking out campsites and fly-fishing opportunities just outside of Asheville, NC in the Pisgah National Forest. If she finds some good places, I may actually leave my diamonds at home and go sit round’ the campfire with her. We both love Asheville and could even see ourselves living and/or retiring there some day. It’s like a small, combined version of all of the cool places in and around Atlanta (Little Five Points, Decatur, Emory Village, etc…). You may recall that one of my very first blog entries referenced the Grove Park Inn. If you’ve never been to Asheville, visiting the Grove Park is reason enough to go. It was built in 1913, during the heyday of the Arts and Crafts movement. And I’m not talking about finger painting and scrap booking. I’m talking about bungalows, natural colors, Morris chairs, inglenooks, Elbert Hubbard and fine craftsmanship. In fact, the Grove Park Inn hosts the Annual Arts and Crafts Conference every February and 2007 will mark the 20th year. What about the Biltmore Estate you ask? Yes, it too is in Asheville and is of course beyond amazingly beautiful. But the comfortable feeling of the arts and crafts era is more my speed and perhaps more my nature.

So, while I’m hanging out at the jewelry joint, Doc. B. will be collecting her firewood for the evening. Hope she’s able to relax and enjoy her communing with nature knowing that I’ll be amid millions of dollars of diamonds with a credit card in my purse.

Pop's day!

Dad and me on the shores of Lake Michigan
The farm house and barn where my Dad grew up
Dad's first school?







Happy Father's day Dad! I bet you weren't expecting this given the tribute to Mom at Mother's day? Hope you are back safe and sound from Hosta College?

Whereas I opined that my Mom didn't particularly care for Mother's day, I think my Dad rather enjoys Father's day. And I'm glad he does because his children like to shower him with annoying attention on his special day - we particularly like to send him funny cards. I mailed him a card many years ago that, on the cover, had a cartoon dog doing a tightrope walk act. On the inside, it said something like "who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks". In good form, Dad gave it back to me for my birthday one year. He's good about recycling, or regifting if you want to call it that. Some might call him a cheapskate, but I'd say he simply developed some creative money saving techniques just trying to get four kids through college. Now he's got four kids with not only college degrees, but graduate degrees - and I know he's proud. He even helped get us all to some great schools: Michigan State (where Dad met Mom), Notre Dame, Western Michigan and the University of Michigan.

But back to teaching an old dog new tricks - I must say that Dad has been a master at reusing old tricks. But, he's also been open to learning new ones. I know this first hand from being the first born. I experienced his inaugeral attempts many times over. You might think this was a bad thing - but it wasn't necessarily always a negative. Take for example his first shot at coaching basketball. I was in fifth grade and the only girl on the team. He coached us to a complete losing season, but thanks to his positive attitude and ever changing tricks, I stuck with basketball and ended up as an honorable mention player on a team that was second in the state my senior year of high school.

And speaking of athletics, Dad's just always been a good sport. Like when I was in grade school and he would put the top down on the Mustang convertable because that's what I wanted. It didn't matter that we lived in Minnesota and that it was cold out, or that I had a blanket wrapped around me. Oh, and one of his great old tricks, that he's reusing with his grandkids now, is the candy in the glove compartment trick. It's a great way to get your oldest grandson to go to the lumber yard with you three or four times while you are building a tree house. A young kid is much more likely to get back in the car to run errands with you if there is red licorice or circus peanuts to be found hidden in the vehicle.

Dad was also a television star. When I was a kid, Dad had to attend meetings several nights per week because of his job. Many of the meetings were televised. So even though he wasn't always home for dinner, we were able to watch him on cable access t.v.

And Dad is also a gourmet cook. His specialties are popcorn, omelets and anything that one can throw together in a microwave.

But I think Dad's best examples of learning new tricks can be found in his acceptance and support of me, Doc B., our life, the things I've wanted to do, who I've wanted to be, and who I ultimately am. Happy Father's day Pops! I love you!

June Cubed

Hosta June
Hosta June again
house finch nest












It's June 13, and for my family, this day could be called June cubed. It's the month of "June" and everyone in my family has a Hosta by the name of "June" in memory of my grandma "June" whose birthday it would have been today. The first two photos above are from the backyard garden that Doc B. has so wonderfully tended. Me, I'm just the water girl. It's part of my morning routine to get up and exercise and then quench the thirst of the potted plants while I take care of my own fluids with black coffee. Happy birthday sweet grandma June, wherever you are...

The other picture above is of a house finch nest built behind a mini, non-functional "see rock city" birdhouse. It's not really a birdhouse, it's more of a Christmas tree ornament - my baby sister gave it to us as a gift. We set it in a corner of our upper porch and the finches decided to do their version of an Amish barn raising.

So, speaking of birds and plants and watering, PLEASE add this movie to your "must see" list: An Inconvenient Truth. It's about global warming. I know, sounds really boring, right? It's not. It's one of those movies that will force you to consider the way you use/abuse our planet - perhaps without even knowing that what you are doing is a problem. Al Gore is the star of the show, it's his baby. But even if you can't stand Al one little bit, and even if you didn't vote for him like I did, you just can't ignore the facts presented in this movie. As my neighbor put it, it's a big powerpoint presentation. Yes, that's partly true, but it also puts global warming into understandable terms and makes you want to adjust your actions. If you do nothing else, please go to the movie's website and click on "take action". This will outline the most basic things that each of us can do to make a difference before my nieces and nephews have to deal with the repercussions. We are that close, possibly within ten years, to some major environmental tragedies. If global warming keeps going along at its current pace, our politicians will have no time to argue about gay marriage, abortion, stem cell research and the sex lives of our presidents... So perhaps we could just stop arguing about all of that right now?

We were pleasantly surprised to see that we are already doing many of the things on the "take action" list. But, we can do more; we all can do more, no matter how "inconvenient".

Here's what Doc B. and I are doing since seeing the movie less than 48 hours ago:
* actually using our programmable thermostat.
* dialing that thermostat up 2 degrees for the summer.
* switching out more regular lightbulbs with the fluorescent kind.
* making a heating and air conditioning filter swap calendar.
* totally unplugging electrical devices when we can, and for sure turning them off when we aren't using them.
* when our current potted plants die, we won't replace them - saves on watering.
* writing to our mayor to find out why our city, Decatur, has not signed the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. Atlanta's mayor, Shirley Franklin, has signed. If you've not heard of Shirley Franklin, you will. I'd bet good Vegas money on her future national political career. My family will be glad to know that Ann Arbor, Michigan has signed on as well. Shoot, even Gary, IN has signed on.
* and the biggie - Doc. B. took MARTA yesterday for as much of her normal car ride as the Metro Atlanta light rail system would allow. Her morning drives have become about an hour and a half long. So what she did was drive all the way to work yesterday but then on the way home in the evening, she left her car at the northern-most MARTA station. She then rode the train all the way to a MARTA stop that is a ten minute walk to our house. This morning, we'll both walk up to MARTA and I'll get off at my usual stop while she transfers from the east/west rail line to the north/south rail line. She'll ride back up to her car and finish the drive to work. We are both anxious to see how much money this saves and if it will even save her some commute time. We'll keep you posted.

Good luck to all of us on this...

Happy Birthday 6/6/06ers!

PHOTOS COURTESY OF: Worldbridges.com, moviemarket.com and Starpulse.com (Janet Mayer)

Why on earth would I place a picture of The Dalai Lama anywhere near snapshots of Sandra Bernhard and Bjorn Borg? Because they were all born on June 6. I held back on including photos of Harvey Fierstein, Robert Englund (the guy who plays Freddy Kreuger) and Gary "US" Bonds. While all of these famous people were born on 6/6, none of them have the claim to fame of being born on 6/6/66 like my brother. Happy 40th birthday, Bro. Perhaps you'll treat yourself to a movie on your big day? I'd recommend "The Omen" remake? Well, either that or "Over The Hedge" since it's real close to that old saying "over the hill".

In case you had never researched this before, I thought you might like to know what was going on at the time of your birth:

*Lyndon Johnson was president and Hubert Humphrey was VP,
*Gas was .32 cents per gallon,
*the average household income was $8395/year and the DOW was at 786,
*Star Trek was in its first year,
*Hot Wheels were introduced, not to mention a battery operated Batmobile,
*Elizabeth Taylorwon best actress for "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" - by the way, if you've not seen this movie, I would highly recommend it,
*Top songs included the Monkees "I'm a Believer" and "Wild Thing" by the Troggs, and
*Claus Von Bulow married Sunny Crawford

Oh Brother, I hope you have a great day! Welcome to the club!

Memorable Memorial Day

I'm still in fun mode from the great long weekend Doc B. and I had and now it’s Friday again.

World travelers and spontaneity freaks won't think there is anything special about our weekend but it was right up my alley. It was a nice mixture of home time and social activities. Here's the scoop if you'll indulge me while I write my "what I did over summer vacation" version of Memorial Day.

We started off Friday evening with a pay per view movie. What a great invention by the way. You check to see if there are any movies on at the time that you want to watch, hook up a phone cord between your Dish receiver and a telephone jack, and voila, you are watching a movie. The charge miraculously appears on your next billing statement and is the same price as a DVD rental at Blockbuster. Now, if I could only figure out a way to have my dad’s famous popcorn come through that same phone line? So, what movie did we select? It was between "King Kong", that was 3 ½ stars but also 3 ½ hours long, or "Memoirs of a Geisha", that only got 3 stars but was just 2 hours long. Since my friend Matthew says that "Memoirs of a Geisha" is his life story, that’s the one we picked. Well, actually we picked it because it would be over by 10:00PM, just slightly later than our bedtime. Since it was a holiday weekend, we figured we could lose the sleep. Little did we know that would become the trend for the following few days.

Saturday we hit the new Lowe’s for some plants and spent the day in the yard. That evening we went to an early cook out at a friend’s house and then joined our neighbors at the Starlight Drive-In movie theater for a double feature. None of us really cared what the movies were, we just wanted to go sit out in the open air, eat really salty popcorn, drink beer, and watch a couple of shows. I think the last time I went to a drive-in was about ten years ago with my middle sister and her husband. I don’t recall what the movie was, but I do remember we enjoyed sharing a bottle of Hot Damn. Once again, an alcohol theme emerges. The first drive-in movie I ever went to was back in the 70’s. The movie was "Saturday Night Fever" and as I recall, we were on a family vacation out west. We all just piled on top of the van to enjoy the show.

Anyway, the movies we watched this time were "Poseidon" and "An American Haunting". I was only eight when Shelley Winters won best supporting actress for the 1972 original "Poseidon Adventure", but I did later see the movie. This updated version was no match for the original, especially with Josh Lucas thinking he was Matthew McConaughey (who, by the way, has broken up with Penelope Cruz and can be seen jogging the streets of Atlanta while he’s here filming a movie), Richard Dreyfuss trying to play a gay man, and Freddy Rodriquez (one of my favorite "Six Feet Under" characters) getting killed off early. And "An American Haunting" also left much to be desired, but it did have some big names in it – Sissy Spacek and Donald Sutherland. The movie was an early 1800’s ghost story. And what is it with Sissy Spacek and scary movies? Try saying that fast three times. First she’s the telekinetic heroine of my namesake’s movie, "Carrie", and then she joins in for "The Ring Two". I think she was also in that movie called "In the Bedroom"? But scariest of all was for sure "Coal Miner’s Daughter". We didn’t get home from the double feature until 1:00AM – closer to our usual wake up time than our go to sleep time.

Sunday we again spent the day in the yard. That evening we went to our favorite Atlanta concert venue, Chastain, an outdoor amphitheatre. A friend of ours is connected with Chastain’s ticket sales and had recruited us a few weeks ago to help out with the phone lines. We blatantly hinted around that some free tickets would never be turned down. Low and behold, we got an e-mail that there would be two free tickets waiting for us at will-call to see "Jewel". We had no idea where the seats would be, we were just thrilled to get to go. We packed our picnic basket with snacks and vino, headed to the ticket window and were pleasantly surprised to find our tickets were in Row B – the best seats we’ve ever had at Chastain. We were so close, that we didn’t even need our binoculars to see that Jewel had in fact had her teeth fixed. I’m not a huge Jewel fan, but I do like her music and have some of her CD’s. She did an amazingly good show and was very funny. She at one point admitted that she knows we all think she sometimes sings like Kermit the Frog, but that she didn’t care because it’s worked out well for her financially. At one point, a guy in the crowd yelled out "I LIKE YOUR DRESS" and she replied, without missing a beat, "I LIKE YOU DRINKING BEER". And at 11:00PM, when Chastain has to turn off the sound system because they are located in a residential area, Jewel was still yodeling. On our way home, we stopped for a slice of pizza and didn’t get home until after midnight…again.

Monday was yet another work in the yard day followed by dinner at Kali's house (nickname not changed as she has nothing to hide). Kali prepared some superb chicken on the barbie, not to be confused with chicken on the ken. After a very pleasant dinner, we made our way home at, finally, a reasonable hour.