when there are no waves, boogie boards make the perfect flotation device.
yesterday we were swimming in the ocean
playing with a borrowed yellow frisbee
spotting crabs and fish in the crystal clear water
minding our own business when we
heard some shrieking from the shore
(the excited kind, not the scared shitless kind)
looked out to the horizon to see three dolphins leaping
in great big arcs out of the ocean
splash splash splash
for ten minutes before disappearing
they were playing
we were playing
it was an awesome way to end the weekend
wedding
Emily’s brother Jason got married to Amanda this weekend in Gulf Shores. It was a very pretty ceremony on the beach near sunset. Super hilarious thing: Emily’s ex was having his wedding ceremony on the beach 30 minutes before Jason! Everyone was cordial – friendly even – and it was just one of those weird coincidences. After the ceremony we took some more pictures, then went went to louisiana lagniappe afterwards for dinner, drinks & cake. I’m super happy for Jason & Amanda (and Conner, Amanda’s son) and hope they have a very happy life together. I’m glad to have her as a sister-in-law!
Book 24: Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick
The subtitle of this book is “my adventures as the world’s most wanted hacker” – and adventures is an apt description of Kevin Mitnick’s life. It’s actually a hilarious account of his hacking activities, which were curiosity-driven and not meant to be exploitative. He was (probably still is) a master at social engineering; that is, cold calling someone & pretending he is someone he’s not to get information he’s not supposed to have (usernames, passwords, server names, dialup numbers). When he starts evading the FBI – that’s even more hilarious. It’s not a very technical book…non-geeks won’t have trouble reading it. I’m still working my way through the coded bits at the beginning of each chapter. A puzzle *and* an entertaining book? Awesome.
432 pages
4.5/5
gravy
last night i made gravy the way my grandma taught me
cooked some onions and peppers down in cast iron pot until they were done
covered some top round steak in flour and salt and pepper
added oil, fried it in the cast iron pot, flipped it once.
turned the stove down to low
put some flour in the pot, a little water, stirred like a maniac for a few minutes or maybe ten until the roux was brown
added a little evaporated milk that had been sitting in the fridge too long
it was so delicious and reminded me of lunchtime when i was a kid
in elementary school i would walk to her house for lunch
sit at her tiny lovely kitchen table and she would cook meat and onions
and put a potato in the microwave, or maybe i’m making that last part up.
sometimes i would bring a friend and there would always be enough
get a jar of peaches from the root cellar for dessert
(the root cellar was literally underneath the kitchen floor).
i’ve been thinking about my grandmother a lot lately
the way she would wash her hair with raw egg and oil in the kitchen sink
so it would be shiny for church.
she would slip me a twenty for mowing the lawn with strict orders not to tell my mom
she would crochet these intricate collars for her shirts to make them pretty, she loved pretty things and i am not sure anyone saved any of those crocheted collars.
i miss her.
Book 23: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Outliers: The Story of Success is another one of those straightforward “why didn’t I think of that” books. The premise of the book is that success is something that can be cultivated, but that circumstances surrounding a person can influence “success” a great deal. For instance, if you want your son to be a successful hockey player, you should try to have them born in January, February or March. That gives them a slight advantage physically when they are playing junior league hockey – a kid born in January will be bigger and faster than a kid born in December, but they will play on the same team. That slight advantage will turn into a larger advantage as the kid grows up – obviously the kid has to have talent, but if he does have talent, being bigger than other kids his age is a definite advantage. Gladwell also talks about the 10,000 Hour Rule – basically, it takes ten thousand hours to master a skill. Professional musicians? They practice their asses off, so by the time they reach college they have amassed more practice time than their peers. Same thing with athletes and technology gurus.
This book is an easy read because it is filled with interesting stories of people’s lives. And also plane crashes.
3.5/5
309 pages
P.S. I have been a reading fiend lately. We’re on week 38 of the year, so I’m only 18 books behind. The race is on!
Book 22: The Outlander by Gil Adamson
The Outlander tells a story of a widow being chased through the mountains of the northwest by her creepy ginger headed twin brother in laws. She is unapologetically mad – she sees visions and hears voices and is generally unkempt. She survives although she probably shouldn’t, mostly based on the generosity (or naivety) of strangers.
This book is a fast, exciting read. I couldn’t put it down once I got started (although it stayed on my to-read stack for longer than it should have).
400 pages
4/5
encores
I was talking with my friend Joel about the amazing Jeff Mangum show we saw in Boston, and how special the second encore was when we had to work for it. Joel looked amused and said that is how encores back in the day used to be – they weren’t automatic. He went on to tell me about this show he saw at Boutwell Auditorium – the Allman Brothers were playing and for some reason the cops were out in full force and they most definitely did not want anyone standing during the show. There was this one guy who kept standing up, and the cops kept going over to his seat and making him sit down. He’d stay seated for a minute or two, and then stood back up again. This went on and on until finally they made him leave the concert. After that, everyone in the auditorium stood up and wouldn’t sit down. The cops stopped the show. Reinforcements arrived with billy clubs, waiting outside the doors in case there was a riot. Father Tree – a local DJ who was famous for playing entire albums on his shows – and the concert promoters went and talked to the cops. Finally they reached an agreement. If everyone in the audience would sit down – and remain seated – the Allman Brothers could come back for one more song.
I was like, oh yeah, that’s cool. Joel started laughing and said “Do you know how long an Allman brothers song is? They played for twenty or thirty minutes!”.
Book 21: Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton
I thought this book would be full of stories about restaurants, but instead it is full of kitchens. And it is not so much a book of stories about kitchens as it is an unflinchingly honest memoir of Gabrielle Hamilton, from childhood to her current life as chef/owner of Prune, a high-end restaurant in NYC. I got a little bored about halfway through the book, but it picks up again, and I’m glad I finished it.
304 pages
3/5
Book 20: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
I really enjoyed this book. Basically it is about a girl who at the age of twelve discovers she can taste the emotions of people who cook the food she eats. (And since her mother cooks a lot of her food, she has special insight into her mother’s innermost secrets). She eventually fine tunes it, and is able to tell the origin of the ingredients (an organic tomato from a particular farm in california, or a factory in omaha). Her other family members have special gifts, as well. Maybe gifts is the wrong word.
4.5/5
292 pages
Boston: What We Came For
Jeff Mangum was amazing live – I never expected to see him live, so it was an honest to god dream come true. He played a full set, came back out for one encore, and then even though we gave him another standing ovation the house lights came up and the background music came up over the PA. We kept clapping & yelling & stomping & banging, and about 8 minutes of this went by and he finally came back on stage to play one more song. (I mean, we waited 10 years to see him, what is 10 minutes of standing?)
There’s a nice writeup here.
And if you’d like to know what I felt like at 7:10pm on Saturday night, after waiting at the bus stop for over 45 minutes with no bus in sight and the start to the show 50 minutes away, well, it was pretty much like this, except with cursing.