half-blood prince and deathly hallows

Don't worry, don't worry there won't be any more Harry Potter book reviews now that I've finished the series. I know that lately it's been looking like I should change the blog name to harrypotter or leakycauldron or hogwarts. I whipped through these two over the past week because I was compelled to finish the last book before learning anything through the media. I actually cried through the last 100 or so pages of the final book of the series last night. So sad to see all these great characters go, but I'll be able to come back to them with Owen and Oona when they're older. I can't wait to revisit them with the kids because I think there are wonderful characters and children can learn a lot from these stories. Think I'm going to need a bit of a reading breather, I'll be showcasing books I'm reading with Owen.

harry potter and the order of the phoenix

Only two more books to go… now if I can just sequester myself away from all media for the next two or three weeks I should be able to get through both books without happening upon any spoilers. I have been reading the bulk of these books at the gym. The elliptical machine and treadmill both have a very good magazine/book rests that have worked for the hardcover books – reading my paperback Goblet of Fire while exercising was quite a feat of human engineering. Okay, so I will admit that a few people at the gym look at me weirdly for being so engrossed in a book while sweating and pumping away. But let me tell you it makes going to the gym so much more enjoyable than flipping through some soul sucking fashion or tabloid rag and the time passes much quicker than when I listen to music or watch the crap on the tv, so I figure it’s all good. These books are so much fun to read! Now I have to go out and see this movie, which has gotten great reviews. How could it not, all of Britain’s acting royalty seems to be in these movies. Oh, how I love Alan Rickman and Gary Oldman and David Thewlis. Ralph Fiennes too, but he’s even harder to appreciate in the Voldemort makeup. Toby was teasing me asking if I was going to the midnight party at Barnes & Noble for the Deathly Hallows book. I couldn’t really drag Owen to that, even though he loves all the Harry Potter movies, he’s not quite 5 yet. And wouldn’t it be sad if I was more enthusiastic than him, all giddy for the last book while he’s busy rubbing sleep out of his eyes and yawning, pulling on my hand, begging me to take him home. But seriously, I didn’t want to go to those book parties. It would be great if I was a kid, but since I’m not it’s best to stay home, finish the Half-Blood Prince and read the last book before the ending is all over the news.

harry potter and the goblet of fire

Can I tell you how badly I wish that I was a British teenage witch going to Hogwarts?! Oh or just to be a teen or tween muggle right now, all these libraries and bookstores are having midnight parties for the final book in the Harry Potter series on Friday. How cool is it to garner that much enthusiasm from young kids for reading. These books are so well done, I can't wait for Owen and Oona to be old enough to read them. The great thing Rowling does is let the characters mature throughout the series and go through all the teenage angst that is so confusing, especially if you're a powerful wizard and have Lord Voldemort on your tail. I'm half way through the next in the series and am just regretting that I didn't start reading these sooner because I don't want to find out the ending of the series until I read it, which will probably be close to impossible with all the publicity Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is generating. I was finishing Goblet of Fire when I took Owen to karate last week and the teacher was like 'you should put a book cover of 'War and Peace' on that so you're not embarrassed to be reading it in public.' I'm not embarrassed, they're a lot better than some of the current adult fiction out there. Apparently though in England they put out Potter editions with adult covers, it's all so silly. A good book is a good book regardless of the niche they categorize it as for where to place it in the bookstore.

vultures

I don't know about you all on the east coast but we had a severe storm here last night. We had just gotten back from eating out at a neighborhood pub, ugh I felt very bloated afterward, and heaved my onion petal belly over the tub to get Oona clean when I noticed the heavy sheets of rain outside our bathroom window. Trees were bowing pretty badly and pieces of our neighbor's tarpapered roof blew onto our roof. I shouted to toby that it looked like hurricaine weather from the second floor and had he looked out the back windows? A moment later I heard him telling me and Oona to get downstairs right away. I know it's bad if Toby's showing concern about the weather. So I toweled Oona off and we came downstairs, just in time to see the umbrella for our backyard table blow past the kitchen window and proceed tumbling down the street. The storm passed quickly and when it was over half of a pine tree was on top of our neighbors minivan. Everyone came out and was gawking at their car. Our poor neighbors! They were at the hospital having their 3rd child at the time. Apparently, they had been in the minivan ready to drive away when the husband's sister said 'maybe you should leave the minivan in case we need it.' So they took their civic across the street, which wouldn't have been hit by the tree, and left the minivan which got smacked down by the pine. Actually it looks like the minivan weathered (ha ha!) the storm pretty well, it looks like it only got some superficial scratches on the roof. But I guess at the time with a downed tree on it it looked pretty newsworthy because a local newscaster came out to cover the story. And, of course, the neighborhood gossip and a family that garners a lot of head shaking and eye rolling, their poor children are doomed, are busy vying for a chance to talk to the news. But I think, in a rare display of restraint, even the newscaster realized this wasn't really worthy of the 'more news less fluff' plug that the station hypocritically says its news is all about. Most people that talk on the news here in Pittsburgh are usually missing a tooth, or five, and have pittsburgh accents so thick at times it would be best to subtitle what they're saying. Gotta love the vultures looking for their fifteen seconds on the local news. Still waiting to hear how the baby is and if they named her yet, as of a week ago they were telling me they still didn't have a name, this might have been an elaborate ruse to keep potential criticism on a name choice at bay.

fondled then tossed aside

Gosh! I have so many posts that I've want to put up but I'm swamped with freelance work right now, which is a good thing money-wise but a bad thing for my back, shoulders,neck and right arm. And I need to put up a new banner for summer, summer will be over before I get to it. I'm going to have to go through old picutres of mine because it's hard for me to find something that epitomizes summer here in Pittsburgh, I guess because I always associate summer with the ocean and beach - I'll get something appropriately summery up there soon. Big news, Toby & I hired a babysitter for the first time ever (can you believe it?) the only people who have watched the kids have been our Moms but I really like this one girl who watches the children at the gym and she agreed to watch them Saturday so we could go out for Toby's birthday and we had such an enjoyable time. It's amazing just how much you can appreciate savoring a leisurely meal and bottle of wine without children! Everything went wonderfully, the sitter said the kids were great so maybe this is something we can do once or twice a month regularly now. Oooh, I might start feeling like an adult again if that happens.

So... I meant this to be a short post to say 'hi' but I wind up rambling about stuff totally unrelated to the pic & title of this post because I wanted to show this bracelet which is what everyone picked up and oohed at when I was at the craft show a lifetime ago but, man, no one would buy it! It was a steal at $40 with real turquoise, amber and sterling. The lady at the bead store told me the dice like beads were yak bone (not ivory) and that they use all of the yak. Who knows, could be resin I just loved the look of them they had great mah jong like yak bone beads too. Now all my beaded jewelry sits in a plastic container that used to contain bindi masala a year or so ago, hopefully I can sell that stuff some time in the future but no craft shows are in my future. I'm not enough of an extrovert for something like that again.

The Devil in the White City

I started reading this book a few months ago and couldn’t get into it but decided to give it another chance and am very glad that I did. Although the book can be a bit slow at times, well, I guess it isn’t really slow, it’s more like there’s a narrative distance, possibly given that it’s a historical novel, still in all it’s very interesting. The story of Daniel Burnham building the World’s Fair in Chicago is juxtaposed well with the darker tale of the insatiable appetite to kill that plagues Dr. Holmes. It's always interesting, to me at least, to see how callow and base some human beings can be. And It was great to read about all these notable architects and, the renowned landscape architect Olmstead, who were so influential to architecture and landscape architecture. The task of making a World’s Fair that would outdo the 1889 Paris World’s Fair weighed heavily on all those involved. The story behind the attraction that’s built to ‘Out Eiffel Eiffel’ is truly amazing. It’s interesting to note what Larsen writes in his notes and sources at the end of the book, he wanted to write a story about this fair because it’s pretty hard to comprehend a city taking on such an impossible feat and having such civic pride in this day and age. And in this modern day of litigation (oh my, all the lawyer commercials I see on TV, some are so comical in their baldness!) there is no way the attraction I tease you with would have ever been built. There, now hopefully I’ve tempted you enough to want to go read this book.

place exasperated sigh here

The past couple of weeks I've been looking at daycare centers. I figured it might be a good idea to put Oona in daycare a couple times a week so I'm not feeling so constantly overwhelmed. I might be able to chip away at my long 'to do' list and it would make it infinitely easier when I got slammed with a bunch of freelance work at once. I also though it would be good for Oona to socialize with kids her age. But I'm flabbergasted at the quality of the centers I've visited and one of these places is a center a few of our friends have used (which has a basement 'play area' for rainy days that's scarier than the basement in 'Blair Witch Project'). Every place has been filthy - stained, grubby carpets covered with litter, most places have smelled. Today's gem reeked of that cloying cherry scent found in porta potties that does little to disguise the smell of poop. The place I visited today was HORRIBLE! Every surface in the toddler room was covered in grime, crayon scribbles or, frequently, both. I felt like being real snarky and saying 'Oh you shouldn't have cleaned up just for me.' but I didn't. To be honest, as soon as I entered most of the places I've visited these past two weeks I knew I'd never leave Oona there but I always feel rude to just leave so I take the tour and ask some questions and then tell them I'm looking around and will get back to them in a week or so. I feel so bad for the kids in these centers. These are the daycare centers that we can afford, they're are other places, probably better, cleaner but it's prohibitively expensive and it's not right that only wealthy people should get quality daycare. These visits at daycare centers make me feel great about the babysitting area at the gym, which is spotless and the girl that watches my children most often is great with them. There's a church I drop Oona off at occasionally that's also clean and is well supervised but it's a 25 minute drive just to get out there so it's not exactly the most convienent daycare available. When we were in a lower tax bracket and before Oona was born I used to put Owen in a daycare that was in a really bad section of town, we used to nervously joke that it was ghetto daycare. But that place was always clean, didn't smell bad and the women that worked there were wonderful with Owen. Unfortunately the center shut down. I'd love to have a few hours a couple times a week to myself so I could clean, cook, iron during daylight hours (now I only do it when the kids are asleep and that's basically the last thing I want to do at the end of the day), see doctors without Oona trying to get into the biohazard needle box, go shopping perhaps. Maybe I could find someone to come to our house a couple times a week, maybe a pediatric resident looking for some pin money.