the speed of light

frisbee in the park, tennis as the sun goes down, staying up late with a heap of library books by my side. food cooked on the grill, or not, and eaten with friends.* digging in the dirt, playing with dogs. it's almost iced coffee time, and there are only two more weeks of getting up at five thirty. i sit at the computer and try to stay focused, but spring is happening outside!

*marinated portobello mushrooms and aparagus, vegan barbecue, coconut-lemon bundt cake, lime popsicles

the inexorable sadness of pencils

there are many pairs of scissors in my life. i have been spending some quality time with them lately.

the dancer and i meditated with the buddhists last night and then visited zoë at work. i was so impressed: she looks just like a real barista! and she made me something very delicious (off the menu) to drink.

i've been "playing tennis" a little bit lately, with zoë and david m. and my leaping boy.

he could've been a ballet dancer if he wanted to.

assaulted by salty pete

we brought the sass to the portland pirates game last night. salty pete came by to ruffle our hair and generally harass us. this was my first hockey game ever; we went because bean had an intensive for school that involved selling tickets to the game. it was bizarre and fun. there was only one fight, and the crowd seemed pretty disappointed, especially when the pirates lost to the lowell devils in the end.

stump

(Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times)


this was the first time in years that i didn't watch the westminster kennel club dog show (and somehow i only remembered to record the first night). it has in the past been our family equivalent of the super bowl, but it just sort of slipped by this year. i'll always enjoy admiring purebred showdogs (and some of my favorite dogs are and have been all fancy and deliberately bred), but any dogs in my future will be shelter hounds. anyway, having said that, look at this spanielly guy who won! he looks like he could be minnow's distant cousin. plus, he's the oldest dog ever to win at westminster. plus, his name is stump.

best superbowl commercial

i already have a favorite, even though the superbowl hasn't started yet. i got a sneak preview watching, um, the puppybowl. mom, i think you will especially enjoy this.

zombie kickball

today was our friend matt's birthday, so we met him, heather, nick and ava (along with other friends mitchell, landis, pie and lulu) at local 188 for brunch, then headed home to apply zombie makeup to boo, nick and ava.

zombie kickball was awesome! as you can see above, it was pretty dangerous for us humans -- there must have been at least fifty zombies there. below, nick and boo look extremely undead:
























see nick running the bases? i think he earned the title of "cutest, littlest zombie of all."
























some random zombies -- i loved the two "tourist zombies" with their maps and tourist outfits:
























zombie group picture -- the only thing better would have been a zombie group hug:



















two zombies formerly known as boo and ava:
























bean, meanwhile, was at an irish pub watching the euro cup with her friend rafaela. we cramped her style a little bit by showing up for the second half of the match. most of the crowd was clearly rooting for spain (as were boo and rafaela), but the rest of us were hoping for a german win.
























below, bean and rafaela. bean's happy look is deceptive -- spain won.
























below, m and matt peek around the corner at the television.
























and the perfect ending to this great day is that the amazing ms.hannah barnes is coming over for dinner.

black forest

bean got her host family this week! she is going to be staying in a smallish town in the southwest part of germany near several small cities and about 45 minutes from stuttgart (a biggish city). she's going to be in the state of baden-wurttenberg, smack dab in the black forest. her family has a mom, dad, 19 year old brother, and a 16 year old sister, who bean has emailed a couple of times. she really won't see the sister, since she will be on exchange in the u.s. next year. i like the idea that her host parents will be in the same boat m and i will be in -- their daughter will be depending on the kindness of her u.s. host family, just like we're hoping these people are really, really nice to bean. she also received a lovely email from her host dad (hans-peter). as you can imagine, she's psyched!

(i can't help but wonder if she was selected the way exchange students seem to be in the u.s. ... from what i've observed at afs events, it's kind of like picking out a puppy -- you look through piles of papers with information about each kid and pick the one that makes you go, "awww! look at this one! can we keep her?")

to celebrate, we baked a black forest cake (schwarzwälder kirschtorte), which is a layered chocolate cake with whipped cream (vegan, in this case) and sour cherries between the layers. it's often made with kirsch or other cherry liqueurs, but we used the juice from the sour cherries. yuuummm.
























above, bean finishes the cake. below, the cake in all its glory:



















i also attempted some brown rice sushi (1. no, it has nothing to do with germany, and 2. i have done it successfully in the past), which came out so weird. for real, spreading the rice on the nori was like spreading oatmeal. i think i added way too much water to my rice, yes indeedy. the consistency was totally wrong, but i found it pretty delicious nonetheless.
























on tuesday, m and bean canceled the trip to view colleges that we'd tentatively planned (bean's head is in germany, not college!) and went and climbed a mountain instead. boo and i stayed home -- i was nerdily nursing my aching back, but i rallied and "played tennis" with boo at deering oaks. we had fun:

rock chalk

i watched about 85 percent of the ku-unc game last night. m watched 100 percent, boo fell asleep just after halftime, and bean lost interest and wandered off about the same time. i missed the amazing beginning of the game, but i persevered to see kansas win!
























this morning i accompanied the dancer on a precarious "walk" on the presumpscot river trail. she was scoping it out for a future field trip. the part of the trail that we were on was mostly a sheet of ice, on which we slipped and slid as we clutched small trees to keep ourselves from sliding right down into the presumpscot river. we didn't make it to the falls, but we did make it (alive) back to the car. unless there's a massive melt between now and thursday, dancer's going to have to re-think this whole field trip plan, unless she wants to watch her students slide into the icy river...

weekend

here's how cultured i was this weekend:

saturday night i went to the maine short play festival with the dancer. some of the plays were good. some were...not. there was one which shall remain nameless that was so painfully not good that i couldn't even look at the stage for a long while. dancer was shaking with silent laughter beside me and i knew i was dangerously close to breaking into uncontrollable giggles. i'm afraid that if you wanted to know exactly what was so painfully bad about it, dancer and i would have to act it out for you.

this afternoon i drove bean and a schoolmate to merrill auditorium to see spirit of uganda, a wonderful music and dance performance by ugandan kids and teenagers. the audience was wildly enthusiastic -- there were a lot of african students there, including a bunch from bean's school.

when we got home, bean and i joined m and boo to watch the final five minutes of the kansas-davidson game. anyone who knows our family knows we're not sports fans. by any stretch of the imagination. but we have a weak spot for kansas basketball (at least m and i do -- boo and bean pretty much just humor us). woo-hoo, k.u. won!!