Boskone 50 - Saturday - A bit of George R.R. Martin

The Boskone schedule had this item listed as taking place in Dragonslair (the children's corner) at 4pm today:

Something Art-y: Bring your Imagination! Join John Picacio, Official Artist of Boskone 47, for this art project.

That sounded exciting, so I went downstairs to participate in that with my daughter. Some weird conceptual art piece, it sounded like.

Instead there were a few children playing with cardboard and pipe cleaners. John Picacio showed up and asked the head of Dragonslair what he was supposed to do. There wasn't a lot of clear direction. My husband showed up and said hi. I found some construction paper and asked Mr Picacio, Do you want to draw something?

"I don't think the kids would be all that interested," came the reply.

My husband made some folded thing out of a light blue sheet of paper.

"What's that?"

"A mask." He showed me.

Mr. Picacio and the kids started to collaborate on a creation made from strips of paper. My daughter made a pretty cool mask out of pink paper and pipe cleaners.

I went upstairs to a panel. It wasn't very interesting. I left.

I looked at the schedule again.

There was a George RR Martin reading. I haven't read his stuff. We're too cheap to get HBO. But I've always heard good things about him, and it is interesting to hear how successful authors read, so I went in.

He was describing a battle scene. He read with a very good voice. He knew his stuff.

Then came the question period.

Someone asked if his story was a parallel to the War of the Roses. He said he stole from lots of different interesting bits of history. He quoted: "If you steal from 1 source, it's plagiarism. If you steal from many, it's research."

Another question led to him recounting how he has received letters from fans who have tried to explain about the seasons on his planet by complicated descriptions of the planetary orbits. His response:

I've thought not at all about the planetary orbits. It's a fantasy book, not a science fiction book....Obviously, science fiction fans have stumbled into the wrong tent.

Someone asked, "Do you feel guilty when you kill your characters?" He replied,

I do feel guilty. Yes, they're like my children....The red wedding until 3 [is that what he said?] was the hardest thing I ever wrote.....Sometimes I say I don't kill them--the other characters do....Death is a part of life. Part of all our lives. Fiction should treat it...When a character dies, you should feel it as you do when one of your loved ones dies....It is important to show death in the cost of war.

When asked about Metal bands using his motifs he said that Rock music influenced him to write Armageddon Rock when he was younger and that all art interacts. He added that he was more of a Simon and Garfunkel fan.

Someone asked if he felt bad that people were only paying attention to the Thrones books, not his many earlier works and he said yeah, he would like it if he could get his readers to read the other books. He said that Stephen Donaldson discovered after writing other books that he had many more Thomas Covenant fans than Stephen Donaldson fans. He said that J.K.Rowling was finding that her many Harry Potter fans weren't coming over to her new adult book. He added that since she now had "more money than the Queen", she could sit in her castle, be waited upon by "the entire cast of Dowton Abbey", write whatever she wants, and if three people buy the book then that's fine.

OK, so I first heard about George RR Martin while watching the old TV show Beauty and the Beast. My boyfriend at the time saw the credits and said, "Oh, George R.R. Martin, he's a big science fiction writer." Which goes to show how long Mr Martin has been on my I-gotta-get-around-to-reading-him-someday list.

The question I would have liked to ask would have been along the lines of, "What book of yours would you recommend to someone who doesn't want to commit to a long series?" But I don't know, I think it might be rude to say to a famous author that you haven't read any of his books.

So, to change the subject for a second or two off of Game of Thrones, I raised my hand and recounted how that TV show was the only one I can remember where I would watch at the beginning to see who had written the episode, and if it was by George RR Martin or David Peckinpah, then I knew it would be a good episode. If not, well the way I phrased it was that other episodes were often written with a different philosophy. The word I was reaching for was closer to schmaltzy, cloying, icky, overly sentimental. That show skated on the edge of icky and too often fell in. Some of the writers were icky and others were cool.

George RR Martin's face seemed to freeze in a way that made me think the subtext was "I am responding in a diplomatic fashion to your question because it would not be good to repeat anything nasty about my friends in television." That could just be my imagination, of course.  I may have made a mistake in praising Peckinpah. Martin said that his own stories were more of the fantasy mystical magical bent, while Peckinpah was more into gritty urban tales. He said that it was a great show to write for because the writers were given a lot of freedom.

When asked about his attitude towards his works being adapted, he mentioned the "truckloads of money" that writers are offered for such adaptations, and that the time to negotiate what happens to your work is before you take the truckloads of money. He said J.K.Rowling could negotiate very good terms because there were many who wanted to make movies from her books. He said that he turned down the first truckload of money that backed up in front of his door, because it was an offer to make a single movie out of his hours and hours of stories. He said that the current deal allows him certain amounts of creative control and that he is satisfied with it. He said that complaining about what happens to your work after you have accepted the truckloads of money is like after you've sold your house complaining about the furniture that the people who bought your house are using.

He talked about how Ireland was a great place to film the show because it saves them money, Ireland even gives them money (and they generate a great deal of money for them in return) and also that it gives them access to an excellent cast of classically trained Irish and British actors.

In response to another question he said that the character Osha was rather colorless in the book, but that  Natalia Tena, who plays her, gives a mesmerizing performance, that would likely influence him if he writes more about Osha in future work. He said her performance was mesmerizing even before she took off her clothes for the role, and even more mesmerizing after.

Someone asked if the plot ever had to change because, for example, an actor wanted to leave the show. He said absolutely, when Linda Hamilton decided to quit Beauty and the Beast they had to write her out. They decided to kill her, but then it was Beauty and the Beast without a beauty. So they introduced another Beauty, but the show only lasted for 6 months after that. He said it was because they had built up the love between the two characters as being such a Great Romance that the audience wouldn't accept a substitute. You can't have Romeo and Juliet and then say, oh no, what I meant was Romeo and Harriet.

That is not what I remember as going wrong with the show. As I said, the show was always on the edge of ickiness. The way they killed off Hamilton's character was kind of icky, but actually, I didn't really like Hamilton's character very much. I liked the new character they brought in to replace her much better. One of the mistakes they made in the writing was to have the boss of the killed character retroactively have been in love with her. They had to give him an icky love motivation instead of just a righteous wanting to find the killer of his respected employee and friend.

It reminded me of the Remington Steele mistake made way too early in the show where they take the character who is supposed to be the female lead's male best friend and reliable brother type character and have him fall in love with her. It is not our fantasy to have our friends in love with us, because then we can't rely on them as friends, and also we feel sorry for them and guilty and pressured and just, ick.

Right. So I was feeling a little guilty about bringing up Beauty and the Beast, wondering if Mr Martin would have mentioned a Thrones example otherwise, for that would have made the audience much happier.

He did complain about how there can be loads of different James Bonds and Charlie Chans etc, but that  TV audiences just won't accept the re-casting for a TV character. He said it does make him want to shake the TV audiences and tell them, "You know these people are f-ing actors. They're not the real people."

When asked whether he had favorites for the Hugos he recommended The King's Blood by Daniel Abraham for Fantasy, and Caliban's War for Science Fiction. He also mentioned books and artists related to his show, for example, a cookbook written by some people from Boston. He said,

I don't think a cookbook has ever won a Hugo before, but it's certainly eligible for it.

Boskone 50 - Friday night - Lost phone and Heather Dale Singing Workshop

First off, why do they start on Friday and have so many interesting panels before we can ever show up? It is a three-day weekend. Most of us have Monday off. Why not start on Saturday and spill into Monday?

Anyway, we missed the space panels Friday afternoon. My husband was collecting children and couldn't make it at all. I got a ride to a T station from a kind coworker who lives in the Fenway, but I left my phone in his car. At least I hope it's in his car. It could be on the streets of Boston or picked up by someone nefarious, but anyway, my watch battery was dead and the phone was gone so I didn't know the time and there are no public clocks in the hotel, at least not on the second floor where the panels are being held. After I picked up my badge I guessed that it was some time after 8, so wandered and saw an open door, which helped me decide between two options. It turned out to be an interesting voice workshop given by Heather Dale.

First we learned to stand with our knees "not locked" and take deep breaths and not worry about yawning. We learned about the importance of breathing. We learned about the adrenaline affects and fight-or-flight response that can occur with stage fright. We practiced pushing against a wall to burn off some of the need for a flight response.

Heather said that we could mark a score with where we needed to breathe and practice the breaths along with the song.

She talked about interval training. I had heard about ear-training for intervals when I took a music theory class some years back. Now I learned that singers train themselves to sing intervals. This training was a solution to a problem that one of the filk singers in the workshop brought up early on when he said that he had a tendency to start the second verse in a slightly different key than the first. The solution to this is to learn the interval from the last note of the previous verse to the first note of the next verse and practice it.

Heather said there were many resources for interval training and that we could Google to find them. One interesting mnemonic method is to use known intervals in songs that we all know quite well.
For example, in  My Bonnie lies over the ocean, the interval between "my" and "bon" is a sixth. The interval between "Oh" and "Tan" in "Oh Tannenbaum.." is a 4th. Heather said we could Google to find lists of songs and their intervals, both standard and with sharps and flats.

We practiced singing "do ray me fa soh" up and down and back and jumping from "do" to "son" to learn 4ths. She suggested that this was something we could practice in the car or in the shower. I have a long commute and I'm always looking for something to practice in the car, so it was good to know.

Someone said that she used her piano to help her with interval training. I said mine was too out of tune to trust. Someone else said electric pianos or piano apps would work. I thought, finally, some use for that tiny piano app I downloaded for my Android phone. Assuming I get my Android phone back, of course.

Someone else said that she knows someone who marks her scores with different colors on each line so that she doesn't get lost. That's a good tip.

Heather quoted a Toastmasters saying about performance jitters, which goes as follows:

It's not about banishing the butterflies in your stomach. It's about learning to make them fly in formation.

After that, I went downstairs to the "Art Reception". There was a very long line for food. The food looked appealing but not worth waiting in line, so I grabbed a slice of bread from the line-free Con Suite area and then walked around the art exhibit. After the line went away, I grabbed some desert. Not worth waiting in line for, so just as well. A jazz band was set up in a corner. Around when I was ready to leave, the trumpeter was playing a great solo. I stood there with my coat on but couldn't leave while the trumpeter was playing. He finally did finish, thank goodness. I had no trouble walking out on the electric guitar.

I strolled over to the World Trade Center Silver Line T Station, caught the Silver bus not too long after, caught the subway to Park Street without a very long wait, and read one of the SF books I'd picked up on the freebies table. Stephen Donaldson's The Real Story. I read that to the Newton Highlands stop then walked around snowbanks over to where we were staying. My husband was there. He'd called my cell phone earlier. I could have gotten a ride if I'd had the phone.

Oh well.

It was an interestingly amusingly told story. At least the beginning.

Do you know there's a prejudice against adverbs? I love using them because of that. So there.

Amazon won't just let me give it 5 stars

First they send me an email asking how many stars I'd give my recent purchase. After I click on the link, they error out telling me that I need to enter words as well.

I'm not a music critic. Different people like different music. That's what I've noticed in life. I did like this MP3 CD.

So, what can I write in their box?

The last time I bought music for myself was when we drove down to Nashua for the Borders going-out-of-business sale. I bought the Ziggy Stardust CD.

I'm generally a radio person. I like the spontaneity, the happiness when an unexpected song I like comes on.

Last summer, whenever the Avett Brothers' Live or Die came on it made me happy. It is hard to be sad when a banjo starts to play. This song I liked a lot. I liked its ability to cheer me up. I would sing it in the car along with the radio. I would come home and look it up on YouTube. My daughters liked it too; we would dance to it in the kitchen. I thought it would be a great CD to send to my sister, who was in the dark recovering from eye-surgery, but the CD wasn't out yet. I bought her another CD, and Amazon gave me a $1 credit towards the purchase of any MP3.

I spent months wondering which of my favorite songs to spend it on. Should I get the Avett Brothers song I like? Or spend the dollar credit on Tangled Up In Blue, and buy the entire Avett Brothers CD?
When the credit was about to expire I looked on the Amazon MP3 store and came to the obvious conclusion that the $1 could just be a dollar off on the album price.

The only thing I've done with the last physical CD I bought was put in into our old iMac to generate the MP3, which I then copied to my iPod and to other computers used to listen to music. The CD player in the Subaru and in the living room has broken. So there was no reason to buy another CD when I'm only going to turn it into an MP3s.

Still the question as to whether to buy the song or the CD's collection of songs. Purchased individually they would cost more than the collection. I listened to the excerpts on Amazon and decided that I would  like the whole album, so bought the collection.

I have been listening to the album over and over on my iPod at work. It has improved my mood at work, and likely saved me from some instances when I would have reached for chocolate.
There is sufficient variety of music in the different songs. One of them has a catchy chorus with the clever line, "You say you wouldn't know me now, but I didn't even know you then."

Still, all five stars? Originally, I thought yes, because I'm very happy with it. But now I think that five should be perfection, or at least reserved for the greats--the albums for the ages, that withstand the test of time. So David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust is five stars, and this wonderful Avett Brothers album a proud four. Let's wait a decade to see how they progress. I'm looking forward to it.

Who to follow on Twitter?

A friend of mine posted this question on facebook:

I just joined Twitter. It's bizarre. Anyone have any good suggestions for people to follow?

Do I?! While I'm collecting them, I may as well save them here. My main reason for Twitter is laughter. Thus:

Most Reliably Funny:

• @SandyBoynton
• @SteveMartinToGo
• @lianamaeby
• @FakeAPStylebook

Funny:

• @GeneHunt
• @RexHuppke
• @JerryThomas
• @adamisacson
• @BestAt
• @pourmecoffee
• @comediansaransh
• @bobfish1973
• @duplicitron
• @TheOnion
• @BorowitzReport
• @StephenAtHome (Stephen Colbert)
• @snarkmonger
• @JRehling
• @missingblakes
• @sixthformpoet
• @rayadverb
• @SoVeryBritish

Stories:

• @VeryShortStory
• @OppieTweets - but read back to beginning. Here it is explained

Journalists:

• @onthemedia
• @NickKristof

Good for Links:

• @openculture
• @GreatDismal (SF writer William Gibson)

Mars Guys etc

• @tweetsoutloud 
• @neiltyson (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
• @TheRealBuzz
• @SarcasticRover  and @MarsCuriosity
• @SirPatStew

Oh yes, and me! @pargery.
Sorry I didn't finish adding all the links. It's tedious.

One way to find out who to follow is to see who other people you like are following.
Another way is to click on the profile of a re-tweeted tweet that you liked, and read the other tweets that person tweeted. If those tweets are something you'd like to see more of, then you have found someone else to follow. I have followed people found through a chain of two or three or more retweets. That is, an interesting tweet, followed to a profile of tweets, among which I found another interesting tweet, so clicked on that profile, etc.

And then you can start playing hash tag games...

Related post: #tweet-types

I miss you dad

It was my first year at McGill. My sisters had chipped in to buy me a huge red parka. We lived in Massachusetts, but I was going way up North. After all, a cold winter wind in Boston is known as the Montreal Express.

One morning, my dad calls me on the phone. I tell him about this huge snowstorm we're having up in Canada. I rave on and on.

My father's description of the Blizzard of '78 were these four words:

We had snow too.

Hard wired Gender differences?

Aline commented on the previous entry that she believes the difference between men and woman are hard-wired. I have found some evidence for that with small children--at my daughters' preschool playground, it did seem that the most persistently and noticeably wild and energetic were more often boys than girls.

I also am perhaps imagining it, but I think baby boys seem more frustrated at their inability to move around, and cheer up quite a bit once they're able to crawl around.

My favorite story that relates to this was when I was pregnant with our second daughter. We were at a family gathering with my two sisters, who had each a boy and a girl. The grownups were lingering over tea and noticed that all the children had dispersed.

"Where are the kids?"

"The girls are upstairs, playing with dolls," came one reply.

"Then where are the boys?"

"Outside. They found a dead rat in the gutter. They're poking it with a stick."

My husband and I looked at each other smugly.  "We're having another girl," we said.

Baffled by Gender

At Arisia this weekend I went to two panels where the topic of Gender was discussed.

I admit I bailed on the first one:  I was feeling guilty because I wasn't at the reading for someone in my Writers' Group. When I found the panel was not very informative, I ducked out to go to the reading.

I went to the second panel in part because Cecilia Tan would be on it. I've read some of her work, and have attended her panels and readings at past sf conventions. I have a lot of respect for her.

Here is the panel description, provided as a quote in case the link disappears:

Beyond Binary: Exploring Gender Via SF/Fantasy — Literature, Panel — 1hr 15min — Paine (2)

When words can take you to the outer limits of space and far-flung fantastic lands, why should so many cultures share the same gender definitions (and oppressions) as we have in the present-day US? How has SF/F given us a different (and hopefully better) perspective on defining gender, and where is it falling short? What are some examples of literature that do a good job in exploring or addressing gender issues of our real world? What are some things we haven't seen yet but would like to?

Dash, Greer Gilman, Julia Rios (m), Cecilia Tan

I could think of two science fiction books that I read in the 1980's that would apply to this topic. The first was the genderless humanoids in Ursula K.LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness. The second was a set of stories by John Varley. One of the stories started with a boy meeting a woman on a train. Later he calls his mother and tells her he doesn't want to go through with previous plans. I remember the mother's response was something like, "After I stayed up all night convincing myself it would be nice to have my daughter back, you tell me that now you don't want to go back to being female?"

I was used to stories about people being able to change gender willy-nilly. That is not at all new. I do think that Varley's characters had the advantage of more advanced medicine to accomplish this than people do currently.

Back in the 1990's, a coworker of mine was in a weekly role-playing game. He told me about a character who had ended up inside a body of the opposite sex. He then had to explain that it was a bad thing, because I couldn't understand that.

There may be something lacking in my imagination, because when I imagine waking up one day as a man, I imagine myself thinking, "Oh, this is fun." Being a woman is fun too. I don't see much importance either way. Use what you've got.

On the other hand, Greer Gilman admired that response in Virginia Wolf's character Orlando, so maybe they don't disapprove of that attitude.

I raised my hand and asked the panel what they thought of The Left Hand of Darkness and of the John Varley stories. They forgot about the John Varley, which would have been a lot more apropos, and talked about the LeGuin. Greer Gilman gave a useful summary of the story and the mechanics of the gender/sexual functioning of the aliens, most of which I had forgotten. One audience member provided the information that LeGuin has revised her thinking on the issue and updated it in another work.

Years ago, I remember my father commenting on Virginia Wolf's writing, saying that he thought her characterizations of men were like a little girl's conception of men and not what men were really like. He said there wasn't any difference between men and women, and I believed him. Since then, people have told me that's not true.

After it was over, I still didn't understand what they were talking about.

My trouble with this panel and with the one previously is that there was a discussion of Gender without a definition of what they meant by "Gender".

I was reminded of Groucho Marx describing an early caveman's discovery: After a lot of observation, he noticed a difference between boys and girls:  The girls were wearing skirts and the boys were wearing pants. I heard no better definition than this at the panels, so it is all I have to go by.

If you reject defining Gender based on your physical form, or your function in sex or reproduction, and you reject the much weaker means of defining it based on roles you tend to take in society or areas of interest, or emotional vulnerability, then what are you talking about when you use the word?

If there really isn't anything fixed about gender then why do you care about it?

I don't care about it, so I have a hard time understanding people who do.

Why is it so important that you need to define yourself in terms of being a particular gender, or no gender or as being "non-binary gendered"?

The panelists spoke of a person they knew, with first name "An" or "Ohn". That's how it was pronounced. They didn't spell it. Anyway, "Ohn" rejected all pronouns and wanted to be referred to as simply as "Ohn". As in "Ohn is going to Ohn's house to get Ohn's cat to play with Ohn's friends..." etc.  They were very respectful of this.

I don't get it. I think that Ohn and those like Ohn are being a pain in the neck to all who have to refer to Ohn.  But I'm open to being convinced otherwise.

So please, un-Baffle me.

Writing For Free, and TripAdvisor

This is from an interview in September, posted on the AdviceToWriters website:

What’s your advice to new writers?Don't write for free. Why should any of these websites pay anybody if everybody's willing to write for free? And they should pay you. Huffington Post paid squat and then sold for $315 million. Associated Content paid bupkus and then sold for $100 million. You have a proven marketable skill. All these sites are starved for content and you know how to provide it. Get paid for it. Even if it's $25. They'll respect you more in the morning.

Rick Reilly, the writer being interviewed, is saying "Don't write for free", but when you read how he got started, he spent years doing just that. So the question is "When and why should we write for free?"

I write this blog to unjam my thoughts. I tweet on Twitter because it's fun. What about writing for websites that make money from my writing without giving me a cut?

Last summer I got an email from "Jane Dwellable" of the dwellable.com website. She was suggesting that I link blogs I had already written about places on Cape Cod to their listings of links to reviews on their website. It sounded kind of strange at first, but then it's nice for my ego to think that maybe one or two more people might go to my blog and read something I wrote, so I went along with it. When I looked for blog entries that I thought I had written about other places we'd stayed on Cape Cod but couldn't find them, I made up for it by writing them a year or two late, and added the links to dwellable. When I tried to add a second link about Truro and could not, I got a polite personal and apologetic email from Ms Dwellable explaining the rules. It was a friendly and positive experience, even though a tad confusing.

OK, compare that to TripAdvisor.

This summer, while searching for a hotel room between D.C. and my cousin's house, I relied on TripAdvisor and other sites to screen out possibly awful places to stay. After staying at the hotel, I wanted to reciprocate for the help, so wrote my own review of the place. I said I mostly liked it, and that the worst thing about it was the annoying noise the elevator made to announce its arrival at each floor. The hotel manager posted a reply apologizing for the creakiness of old elevators. He misunderstood. The issue was an electronic tone. The elevator itself seemed to be function OK.

After I posted that one review, TripAdvisor sent me email encouraging me to write more. They also sent me a free suitcase name tag, which was pretty nice. So it was writing for a bit of swag, not just for free.

In September, I was on a business trip in Pittsburgh, teaching a class for a few days. On the way back to my hotel one afternoon, I passed a Greek restaurant and paused to read the posted menu. I'd been pausing to read a lot of menus, since I had to figure out where to get supper. A man who seemed to be the owner of the restaurant came out and tried to convince me to eat there. I said I needed to drop my stuff off, but would likely be back. Before returning to the place, I thought to check its on-line reviews.

There were several on various sites, including TripAdvisor. Some of them were very positive. Some were very negative. Most of them mentioned the Greek owner of the place, and had much to say about his character. Obviously, the place would not be the same without him. I was intrigued, and resolved to go to the restaurant and add my review to the controversy so others could benefit from my data points. When I arrived at the restaurant, I did my best to take a quick photo of the manager, even though it was awkward and I couldn't get a great shot of him. I thought it would be really important for a photo of the heart of the restaurant to be included with the review.

Christo's Mediterranean Grill owner displaying his "Best Of" award

After posting the review and attaching the photo, I got a form email from TripAdvisor saying that the photo had been kept out of the posting because it had broken their rules. The rule was something about the photo not being of general interest to those who wanted to know about the restaurant. The nearest I can tell is that there's some robot that is rejecting photos that have faces in them. The email was one without a reply address. I tried entering a justification about the photo from TripAdvisor's contact-us web page, but there was never any human reply.

I was getting emails telling me I'd get a Trip Reviewer's badge if I wrote three reviews. I didn't know what that meant, so wrote a third one, curious what that would be. It turned out to be an email, telling me I had my "first badge". It means I have a star next to my name on the review site.

The TripAdvisor robot periodically emails to tell me that I'm "just three reviews away" from getting my second badge. I don't know if I'm maybe too old to be motivated by stickers. I guess I'm too old to be motivated just by stickers. I would like some human response. It really doesn't take much, honestly.

Back on MySpace

I logged into my neglected account on MySpace today, and it seems to have become a reasonably private place to stream music. The people are gone, but the bands have found a home there.

If I keep the account not-connected to any of my other social network accounts, then I think I'll be able to listen to music without the annoying updates to my Facebook timeline, as occurred after one drive home from work trying to use Spotify to replace the silence of a broken radio.

to use up three egg yolks

[Jump to recipe]

After baking later than I should have, trying not to disappoint the birthday girl, I found myself looking at three leftover egg yolks and remembering the birthday girl had asked for egg nog earlier in the grocery store. She'd been asking for lots of stuff at the grocery store. I think she was hungry.

I drew the line (or one of the lines) at egg nog. "One year Breyers made egg-nog ice cream and it was delicious. I wish they'd do it again. But this stuff, no. At the very least it's too early. Wait until it's closer to Thanksgiving."

But egg nog was on the brain, and I remembered making it for a holiday party long ago.

I checked Joy of Cooking. There was a recipe that involved heating, in the hopes of killing the bad raw egg stuff.  Hmm, beat up egg yolks, with sugar, add nutmeg and milk and cream. Well, there's no cream, just skim milk, but with egg yolks we probably have enough fat.

The book said to use a double boiler, as if I had one, or was willing to bother with one pot inside another. Instead I used this new saucepan I'd found at Marshalls, with a blue coating that was supposed to be healthier than old-fashioned teflon. I whipped the egg yolks with an equal amount of sugar, using the covered teflon-safe whisk. I turned on the heat and poured in the skim milk. Dropped in a bit of cloves and a lot of nutmeg. The mixture turned foamy.

The recipe said to cool and strain it, but I thought, why? It would be like cocoa, nice and warm. As for straining, I don't want to get the strainer all gooky. What a pain to wash.

I poured it into a glass mug, added a generous amount of Screech rum, and, wow. It was way better than I deserved it to be. Worth repeating. Worth blogging about, in case anyone else wants to try.

Warm eggnog.

I offered the birthday girl a taste without the rum and she thought it rather nasty. I wasn't surprised. I suspected that it definitely needed the rum. The surprise was that the mixture wasn't horrible, even with rum. It was quite good. The husband agreed.

Not very good for my cholesterol count, alas.

Here's my guess at the amounts:

• 3 egg yolks
• 1/3 cup sugar (based on the size of the ramekin that held the egg yolks)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves (guessing)
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg (guessing)
• 1-2/3 cups milk (since it made enough to fill two 1-cup mugs)
• a dollop of good quality dark rum for each mug. (3 tablespoons each?)

Whip egg yolks with sugar, pour into saucepan, add cloves.
Turn heat on low.
Stir in about a third of the milk. Add nutmeg. Stir in the rest of the milk. Increase heat to medium, but keep stirring. When it's nice and frothy and warm, and you think you've killed the bad egg germs, turn off heat and pour into two mugs. Add a dollop of rum to each.

Bonne nuit.

Andy Warhol Museum, in Pittsburgh

Here's what I'm entering as my third review for Trip Advisor. They say I'll get a Reviewer Badge when I complete my third review. I don't know what that means. My guess is that they'll email me an image of a badge with the word "Reviewer" on it.

I'll click "Submit" on the review, and then find out!

Learn About Warhol

I squeezed in a lunchtime visit to the museum during a business trip since I didn't know when I'd be back in PIttsburgh. I didn't resent the $20 admission, for I could see it as a charity--that place must have rather high electric bills. If I'd had to pay admission for my spouse and kids too, we might have decided to go elsewhere.

After I read that his estate was worth $222 million when he died (I think that's what the sign said, it was on the first floor), and in seeing recent legal trouble over a banana graphic, I thought that perhaps there should be more money out there to fund this place than for one devoted to a less successful artist, but anyway...

I left with a greater respect and understanding of Warhol as an artist, which means the museum served its purpose.

I didn't know about the last supper reproductions, or the annunciations, or remember his connection to Interview magazine. I'd never seen his fanciful graphics from the 1950's. I hadn't been aware of his serious work in video. There was an impressive black canvas with white egg shapes cut out that I would have guessed was by another artist. It was great to be able to see the wide range of Warhol's work. So it was very educational. I also left with that odd pleasant feeling of looking at everything differently, which lasted for the walk back to work.

There were warnings in front of the galleries that wouldn't be appropriate for children, but most of the galleries would have been fine for kids, at least for my kids.

One art installation - Silver Clouds - made me wish my kids were with me. I imagined it would be difficult to pull them away. It was silver mylar balloons the size and shape of bed pillows. I guess they had been filled with just enough helium to make them sort of float. They were being blown around with a fan. Visitors were invited to play (gently) with the balloons. Kids would love that.

There were other interactive installations, such as one on learning about Warhol's coloring technique, that I would have liked to have tried out, but I didn't have time. One advantage to visiting in the middle of the weekday would have been that there weren't any lines in front of these activities.

I thought doing detailed blow ups of Renaissance paintings using Warhol's as an example would be a good project for an art teacher to assign--then someone told me that they had done that in art class, which I suppose validates it. There were other ideas that would be fun for art teachers to copy.

There was a really cool white elephant sculpture with black graphic designs on it that had a signature that wasn't Warhol at the base. I looked around for a plaque that would explain who had made it, when, etc, but couldn't find one.

You can look through the museum quickly, as I did, and feel like the time was well spent. I would have liked to have looked over all the videos playing on the hundreds of screens, and tried out the interactive exhibits, so you should certainly block out several hours if you are planning a visit.

I bought a sandwich/wrap at the cafeteria and they offered fresh fruit as an alternative to a bag of chips. That was a good policy, and the sandwich was good.

I was tempted by the Warhol-graphic skate boards in the gift shop, but didn't think I could get them into my carry-on. So I bought my daughters stationery decorated with Warhol graphics from the 1950's. Maybe they'll want to write a letter to someone some day.

Bloody Frog: I'm not dead yet!

There was a frog in the middle of the path near our driveway. One of its eyes looked sliced off, the other was milky. It didn't move at all, even when I got very close to take its photo.

I walked inside and asked, "Does anyone want to see a dead frog?"
Both girls and Rodrigo said, "No!"
I said I wasn't sure it was dead, but if it stayed in the path, someone would step on it.

I went back out. The frog was still unmoving, but it had moved by about a half-foot.
I got very close to take another photo. It spun around, startling me, then froze.

I went inside to tell Rodrigo the frog wasn't dead, but he had already gone out through the basement to collect the shovel. By the time I got out again, the frog was gone.

Rodrigo said when he came out to bury the frog, it jumped onto his shovel. So he carried it carefully to a safer spot.

my child's future lost to a cell phone on buzz

A Montessori charter school for grades K-3 is opening up in Manchester this fall. Last spring, we entered our daughter in the lottery for a spot. She didn't get in. We didn't get a post card or any notification that she was on the waiting list. Months went by. We got over it.

Last Tuesday we went on vacation, a long car trip to New York, then D.C., then back to New York, then back home. In D.C. I had tried calling my husband's cell phone and he didn't answer it. I thought it was just museum noise.

He was driving us from D.C. to N.Y. around 9:30 at night when I noticed the cell phone in his pocket. "That can't be comfortable," I said, so I helpfully pulled it out. Then I noticed, "There are messages."

"Probably just you calling me yesterday," said Ro.

"I didn't leave a message."

I called and got one message from his mother, plus another from someone at the Montessori Charter school: "We need to hear from you by 5pm today if you want Rafaela enrolled."

"Oh my gosh!"

My family all worried that someone had died, I sounded so excited.

I emailed from New York, around midnight, and called them the next morning, around 8:30 am.  It was too late. They had given away her slot.

Now, I had been checking my email accounts daily. We did find the cell phone message within the same day that it was left. We just have never gotten around to figuring out how to retrieve messages from our home answering machine. We have never received any messages before that couldn't wait for us to return from vacation. Apparently, the school left us one message on Thursday, another one earlier in the week, and then thought to try the cell phone number on the day of our last chance. Had Ro's cell phone been set to ring instead of buzz, there's a good chance he'd have answered it.

Ro tells me he had explained that the cell phone, which was my cell phone before I got a new one for work, was stuck on buzz and he didn't know how to change it to ring. I don't remember him telling me that. It was one of those couple miscommunications--was he talking while I was looking like I was paying attention? or while I didn't look like I was paying attention? I could have fixed it when he said he told me, and then we'd have a daughter in Montessori school.

Today's Google Doodle celebrates the 142nd birthday of Maria Montessori. Yeah, rub it in, Google.

The important part of Clint Eastwood's RNC speech

I would just like to say something, ladies and gentlemen. Something that I think is very important. It is that, you, we — we own this country.

We — we own it. It is not you owning it, and not politicians owning it. Politicians are employees of ours.

And — so — they are just going to come around and beg for votes every few years. It is the same old deal. But I just think it is important that you realize, that you’re the best in the world. Whether you are a Democrat or Republican or whether you’re libertarian or whatever, you are the best. And we should not ever forget that. And when somebody does not do the job, we got to let them go.

from http://www.allmediany.com/news/5709-text-of-clint-eastwoods-speech-at-republican-national-convention

Today's Split Pea Soup

• 1 package green split peas
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 small clove garlic
• carrots - peeled and sliced into disks
• potable water
• thyme
• small amount of dill
• small amount of tamari 
• salt
• hungarian paprika or cayenne (be careful)

Rinse split peas in the bottom quarter of a largish pot, then add more water to at least 3/4 full. Cook on high. Add a teaspoon or so of salt. When the water boils, turn off the heat and let the peas soak while you cut up the onions and peel and slice the carrots. Skim the foam off the top of the water. Add the onions and turn on the heat again to medium-low. After it has cooked for a while, add the carrots. Once the peas have started to soften, stir in the spices, cook on low for a bit, then let soup stand and cook on residual heat.

Tonight's Cream of Mushroom Soup

• 2 TB olive oil 
• 1 TB butter
• 1 diced onion (I used red tonight)
• 2/3 package mushrooms, thinly sliced & chopped (baby bella)
• 3 TB flour (1 www, 2 a-p)
• 3 cups milk (I'm really just guessing at quantities)
• shake in some worcestershire sauce
• shake in some tamari soy sauce
• 1/4 cup potato flakes
• 1/3 cup grated cheese (e.g. parmesan-gouda)
• salt
• fresh ground pepper
• thyme
• dill
• sage
• oregano

Melt butter in olive oil (or use all butter or all olive oil). 

Add the diced onions & sauté.

Add 3 tablespoons flour, stir, let brown for a minute or less.

Add chopped mushrooms. Stir.

Add 1 cup of the milk and stir. Then gradually add the rest.

Cook for a few minutes.

Shake in the worcestershire and tamari.

Thicken with the grated cheese, then the potato flakes.

Cook long enough to melt the potato flakes.

Season to taste.

Mushroom Paté:

If you use less milk, slightly more cheese, and grind it up, it probably makes a good paté.

DC: Smithsonian U.S. History Museum - Lots of Stuff

Sunday morning we found a parking spot that turned legal at 10 am, just a few minutes before we arrived. There was only one or two cars when we decided that it was probably OK to park, but we'd get out and check the sign again. By the time we got out, there were five or six cars there. The spot was conveniently located on the same block as the Smithsonian U.S. history museum.

In the entry hall, exhibition cases contained interesting tidbits. My favorite was Jack Warner's address book open to the D's: Drugstore, Irene Dunne, Walt Disney, Salvador Dali. There was also Harry Potter's Robe with Griffendor insignia.

There was a child-friendly transportation display with Trains and Boats and Cars. We looked at boats first. A docent provided a helpful in-depth explanation of privateers in response to our questions. There were lots of cool ship models.

Then there were big trains, and re-creations of trains stations, lunch counters, 1950's car-salesmen. There was a circa 1960 Chicago subway car that you could sit in. And an Indian and Harley motorcycle.

Rafi and I loved the first lady costumes, that is, gowns. At the Presidential exhibit. I took a closeup of Warren Harding's pajama pocket.

When Rafi got tired, there was a play area under the heading "Hall of Invention". There was a sign up saying the area was only open until Labor day, so parents of children tired of walking around will have to think of something else. In this play area were displays of the original muppets - Sam and Friends. There was also the TV Superman costume.

A later, but still early (1971) Kermit was upstairs, close to Adlai Stevenson's briefcase, in the section of the museum that had the ruby slippers at the entryway.

The basement, a.k.a. "LL" or "Lower Level" contains simulator rides, which cost $7 for 5 minutes. Of course I was too cheap to let Rafi go.

DC: Archives and Nat'l Gallery

We'd been thinking of taking our annual camping trip in Maine or NH this year, instead of Cape Cod. We love the Cape, but we live in NH, and I was wondering if my fixation on Cape Cod had to do with growing up near Boston. Why not save the two days being stuck in traffic (to & from), and try someplace closer?

Then a cousin of mine who lives near D.C. and whom I haven't seen in several years invited us all to a party she was throwing to celebrate a happy event. It was a chance to see some nice and interesting relatives I don't see too often, so we altered vacation plans to do some touring in Washington D.C.

The main problem with this plan was that I wasn't looking forward to waiting in lines and walking in the hot D.C. summer sun, but we actually lucked out with the weather. It was warm enough for us to enjoy a swim at the hotel in the late afternoon when we arrived, and then it was kind of cloudy and rainy for the next two days. There were some downpours, but we didn't happen to get caught in them. They just kept the air relatively cool. Decent museum weather.

The Spy Museum was top on my list, and the kids also thought it would be fun. We checked the website the night we arrived at the hotel and saw that it would cost our family of four $70 to visit. I had thought all the museums in D.C. were free, so balked at that price, particularly since I had never yet seen the National Archives or the U.S. History part of the Smithsonian, both of which are still free.

Saturday morning we found a parking spot across the street from the National Gallery. We walked to the archives. There was a bit of a line at the door, then a bit of a line to enter the Main Attraction--that is, the Rotunda containing the Declaration of Independence, drafts of the Constitution, Bill of Rights, two murals, and a funny letter complaining about the murals, and other stuff too. One of those awe-inspiring places to which Americans likely want to make pilgrimage to at least once. I was glad my children were able to appreciate it.

We ate lunch in the Archives cafeteria. The cans of soda were $1 each, which was refreshing. The street vendors and the roadside rest areas charge much more for drinks. My husband and I shared a cranberry-tuna sandwich. Cranberry turned out to be a good addition to tuna salad, so we learned something even in the cafeteria. All the sandwiches were $5.75 each. The kids didn't want tuna, so ate ice cream sandwiches, which were $2 each.

I dragged the kids into the National Gallery to see one of my favorite paintings, which looks like a science fiction landscape but is actually from the early Renaissance. St John in the Desert, by Domenico Veneziano.

We wandered around to see whatever we could in the time before we had to return to the hotel to get ready for the party. There was a really huge Rubens depicting Daniel in the Lions Den. Rafi and I sat on a bench to look at it and rest our legs. The lions had great fur and were very lion-y, but we started to notice that, as desperate as Daniel looked to be in his predicament, the lions had not yet noticed he was among them. The weren't looking at him. One was even asleep. There was a human skull at the bottom of the painting, so maybe they were still full from the last prisoner.

I tried to get the kids or even my husband to pose against Andrea del Castagno's portrait of David on a shield with their hand spread out like David's, but they all refused. One thing interesting about seeing it in real life is that you can see the bolts of the shield that are painted over. The surface is not entirely flat.

I wasn't aware that Leonardo's portrait of Ginevra de Benci was the only portrait by Leonardo in the U.S., but according to what I remember the placard about it said, it is. The girls did pose in front of that painting, perhaps because I didn't ask them to look silly while doing it. Rafi has a round face that more closely resembles Ginevra's, but I couldn't get a good juxtaposition of the two.

When I was in college, a lot of people had a poster of this girl in a garden by Renoir. Something about it always bugged me--something about the white face and blonde hair, the way it spreads out. I don't know what it is, because I like pretty much every other Renoir painting I've seen, but there's something wrong with this one. I looked at it in the National Gallery to see if perhaps it just wasn't translating well in reproduction, but no, I didn't like it in real life either. And, yes, all the other Renoirs in the gallery were beautiful.

I took lots of photos. If I post them somewhere, I'll link to them.

Fairfield Inn, Laurel MD

The most annoying feature of this hotel was the squeaky buzz that the elevator made to announce each floor. It was nasty and grating. Otherwise, the hotel was a clean and comfortable place to stay--quite mid-range, with a few amenities.
Our room had two queen-sized beds, one narrow window, a nicely functioning air-conditioner with controls that allowed us to change it to our preference. You could also open the window, if you wanted to attempt fresh air from the parking lot.
I had checked off "rollaway bed" when making the reservations, and it was dutifully standing against the wall, but I don't think there was enough floor space to open it. We told the desk people to take it away and they did. The kids shared the other queen bed.
I don't know why I've begun to assume that hotel rooms always have a mini-fridge. This one did not. There was a small coffee maker on the bathroom sink-counter, with one packet to brew decaf and another to brew regular coffee. I made a pot of the decaf when we arrived. It didn't taste very good, but I am kind of fussy about coffee.
The next morning, at the included-with-room-price breakfast, I poured some of the non-decaf to try it. It didn't smell very good. Alas, the hotel does not Proudly Brew Starbucks. Then I noticed that they had a hot-water spigot and tea bags, including Earl Grey and Constant Comment, so was happy to drink tea after that. The coffee and tea is available 24-hours, so I didn't attempt to brew the other packet of coffee after that.
I know I'll sound like those ladies at that Catskills resort who complained that:

This food--it's inedible! 

Yes! And such small portions!

when I say that I thought they should have replaced the vile packet of decaf the next day, but they did not. I mean, housekeeping couldn't have known that I didn't drink it and didn't want more. No, really, we didn't pay enough for mind-readers on the staff.
Sweeteners, lemon packets, and some weird creamer stuff was out 24-hours, but I was glad I nabbed a packet of honey at breakfast when I made myself some herb tea late at night. The honey was only available at breakfast, and honey is best with herbal tea late at night.
OK, for breakfast, the fun thing was the make-your-own waffle, which really worked out better if you took the time to read the short instructions as to how you were supposed to do it. I stayed at a Marriott in Pittsburgh earlier this year that had the same waffle-makers and two kinds of batter. The second batter was "blueberry", which was a ground-up purply gloop that I somehow couldn't resist trying, but it was pretty awful. I was glad that the Fairfield only had the plain batter. There was no real maple syrup. The syrup provided was not a good imitation, but my kids were happy with it. I was happy to find packages of real butter under all the margarine packets, but didn't find those until the third and last morning of our stay.
There was oatmeal, which suffered from the usual problem of institutional oatmeal in not tasting good after sitting out a few hours. Why don't they learn to change it hourly, like coffee? So one day it was okay, and the next day too glutinous.
There were hard-boiled eggs, too-sweet muffins, bread and English Muffins to toast, some sort of bacon-egg-cheese sandwich to microwave, and little cereal boxes. My kids were happy to grab Fruit Loops, which they've never seen at home. The first ingredient listed in Fruit Loops is sugar, not even wheat.
There were two brands of yogurt. One brand of strawberry yogurt was colored with carmine, which is made from beetles and therefore all-natural. The other brand had artificial sweetener and red dye. There was also apricot yogurt and fruit cups. The "super-fruit" fruit cups of pear in blue-juice was bad. The grapefruit sections were great.
There were also soft cookies in the lobby in the afternoon. That put smiles on the kids after a long traffic-delayed drive from New York when we first checked in. The staff was friendly, though we did not have to deal with them much.
My main complaint with the room was that the bathroom vent was too small and there was no fan. Taking a shower really steamed it up in there. I did like that the shower nozzle was good for showering, though lacked one of those quick switches at the top to temporarily shut off and save water while you're putting conditioner in your hair. I liked the clean smooth tub, and that the tub-plug worked for when I wanted to take a bath. Showering-only has become so prevalent that some hotels forget to make sure their tubs work. After walking around in museums two days straight, it was nice to soak aching muscles in a tub.
When we arrived, there were only three bath towels in the bathroom and not enough shampoo, even though the reservation said four people. After we mentioned this, more towels and shampoo appeared in our room when the rollaway bed was taken away.
We all enjoyed cooling off in the outdoor swimming pool in the evening. The pool opened at 10 am on weekends, but not until 3pm on week days. After Labor Day, it was either going to close or have shorter hours. The pool was not large, but not as small as the indoor pool in the Pittsburgh Marriott. The kids could have fun racing across and back, though they are not strong swimmers.
There is a fried chicken and fish restaurant next-door to the hotel. It might have been good, but it kind of smelled off. On the other side of the hotel is a large shopping plaza with a grocery store and lots of chain restaurants. Free and ample parking. Less than a half-hour's drive to D.C., depending on traffic.

North Truro 2010 - North of Highland Campground

This was our second year camping on the cape. We were not so fortunate with the weather as we'd been the previous year. It rained for the first three days. Soaking. Solid.

But we'd managed to reserve a campsite that was on higher ground, so we weren't entirely miserable.  The campground had a large blazing fire in its main lodge. We sat in front of it, dried our socks and raincoats, and ate toasted marshmallows.

You can walk to the beach from the campground, even with small children. It is not a short walk. You do have to cross two streets, but otherwise the trail is mostly through pretty woods. It is a very nice beach. Not too bad in the rain, depending on your stamina.

The people at the front desk were friendly, though strict about the rules. After you check out, they won't let you leave your car in the parking lot while you go to the beach one last time.

There was a playground, which the kids loved, and a store, which the kids loved, and there were ping-pong tables in the lodge. You could borrow ping-pong racquets from the store.

The campground was not far from a Stop & Shop, for restocking groceries.

The bike path was very close to the campground as well. With teenagers, you could probably bike to Provincetown. But that was beyond the range of my children's capabilities.

You definitely want to take your bike to the Cape.  The bike trail was beautiful, and relatively flat.

My husband thinks that walk-to-the-beach is a trap because, unlike the previous year, we didn't often drive to the other wonderful beaches in the area. I would rather not climb into a car if I don't have to.

I could see going back there to spend a relaxing week riding the bike trail, walking to the beach, playing ping-pong, and sitting in the lodge catching up on writing and reading. There was even a small adults-only lounge. (Not in the X-rated sense, but in the sit-and-read-in-peace-and-quiet sense.)

On the way home, stop by the Truro Vineyards and pick up a few bottles of the local grape for the folks you left to take care of your pets while you were away, and as a little bit of vacation to drink once you've been back in the real world for too long.

That was our plan, but unfortunately, we left on Sunday, and they close early on Sunday. We didn't get there in time.

If you're looking for a semi-rainy day activity, the winery also gives a free tour, which my husband and I found fascinating, while our children were bored out of their skulls.

Truro on Dwellable