first efforts

Library books are fun!

Especially when they come tied up in festive little packages, like this one:

The library owns two copies of this book. One is in the rare book room, the other is now in my house.

For the record, this is Soundings of the Atlantic, an 1864 collection of Oliver Wendell Holmes essays originally published in Atlantic Monthly. It is gift-wrapped because it is fragile, and so old that it had to be retrieved from Oak Street Storage, the mythical place where old books go to retire.

This copy should probably be in the rare book room too, and not made available for check-out to ruffians like me. But I will take good care of it, I promise. And I must admit, there's something sort of reverent and meaningful about carefully untying the book, reading several pages, then carefully tying it back up again. We should all treat one another's work with such care.

Let's hear it for chicks with skills!

This past weekend I played house-sitter for friends who live in the country. It was a pretty rough gig: drink the beer they left me, eat the chocolate they left me (do my friends know me or what?), enjoy the prairie view, play with the cats, read books, make pictures, and hang out in a fabulously renovated nineteenth century farmhouse. Lovely and relaxing.

It was a good time for me to leave home for a few days, because after I painted my bathroom on Friday the whole upstairs reeked of paint. It's embarrassing how happy little changes like new paint can make me. So imagine my sheer home-improvement joy when I returned home yesterday to discover that I had been visited by none other than the Light Fixture Fairy, who blessed my newly-awesome bathroom by sneaking into my house and installing my new light fixture for me. Thanks, LFF! She does good work, no? And I believe she can also be paid in beer and chocolate.

Stormy weather

Thunderstorm moving in from the West, Saturday night, Piatt County

Something is just a little. bit. off.

Lately it's just weird around these parts. Since I got back from Nashville it hasn't rained at all. The grass is bone dry. I'm watering all the new plants constantly and still they beg for more. I wake up in the morning with nosebleeds. And I have developed a dry, hacking smoker's cough when I run. Apparently we are now living in Arizona. Seriously. 90 degrees with 24% humidity? Where am I?

All of this must be taking its toll, because I have gotten a little stupid. Several days ago in the shower I reached for the cleanser to wash my face and put it in my hair as if it were conditioner. Then the other night I was getting ready to leave to meet a friend when my beloved called. I chatted with him while I locked the house, opened the garage, and got in the car to drive away. It was not until I put the key in the ignition that I realized that I was not talking to him on my cell phone, but on the cordless phone from the house.

It just started raining five minutes ago. Not a minute too soon.

Of cool countries and t-shirts

My Brother the Dean and the Dean's Queen (aka sis-in-law Jan) are visiting Iceland this week. I'm very, very jealous. I have been to Iceland twice and loved it, loved it, loved it. So much so that this is how lame I am: I actually took a photograph of my favorite t-shirt, one I bought at the University of Iceland bookstore three years ago, e-mailed it to them, and begged them to bring me back another one exactly like it. Because the one I have is nearly threadbare. And because that specific design, featuring the seal of the University of Iceland in Icelandic and Latin, has this Soviet-block-state-in-the-1980s graphical look that makes me feel very, very cool when I wear it.

Finally, satisfaction for all your animal cuteness needs!

Many years ago I listened to this hilarious piece from This American Life about a man's failed attempts to create "The Puppy Channel," a cable channel that would show only puppies: all puppies, all the time. It was an idea ahead of its time, perhaps, but strikingly prescient.

To wit: I am pleased to bring you my current favorite blog, which my beloved and I affectionately refer to as The Puppy Blog. It chronicles the being-born-and-cuteness adventures of a litter of golden retriever pups, eight of them to be exact, who will be trained to work as service dogs with the Helping Paws organization in Minnesota. Thanks to a tip from my sister-in-law, who is training a Helping Paws pup of her own (the fabulous and occasionally naughty Belle), I am now All About the Puppies. The puppies are four weeks old now and my beloved and I have been closely watching their every move since birth. We are quite firmly addicted to these daily doses of cuteness, sending each other e-mails like, "Their eyes are open, their eyes are open!" and "Did you see the pictures of them eating?"

The pictures of them eating, by the way, are hilarious.

Engineers: They can do stuff!

Nephew Ben graduated a week ago from the U of I's super-highly-ranked engineering program; he'll continue on in their master's program next fall. Now he that he has graduated, I can officially call him Bengineer!

I am really looking forward to having Bengineer around for two more years -- not only because he's great to hang out with, but also because he helps out with household chores (usually in exchange for food or beer). And let me tell you, having an engineer around the house is very, very handy. Because engineers have skills!

 

I guess I really am a Morning Person

Things I do when I drop my beloved at the airport at 5:15 a.m. and decide not to go back to bed when I get home...

stop at the office to pick up library books to read over the weekend -- scaring the pants off the Lincoln Hall janitor, who doesn't expect to see people coming out of their offices with an armful of books at 6 a.m.;

listen to NPR while systematically cleaning out and organizing every cupboard in the kitchen that got "rearranged" by the renters during sabbatical year;

separate out kitchen items no longer used but that Nephew Ben might want for new grad student apartment in the fall;

box up said items with other items (plates, bowls) found while rummaging through basement for other things to get rid of, er, generously give to Nephew Ben;

do computery things, including e-mail and the usual morning web surfy stuff, including the now ubiquitous Gunflint Trail fire updates (news is good!);

make calls to schedule doctor and dentist appointments postponed while on sabbatical and re-order subscription to New York Times;

call catalog company to place clothing order and figure out why I haven't gotten earlier order that was supposed to be shipped to me a week ago;

rummage through stored items in basement to retrieve family photos and other signifiers that need to be re-scattered throughout the house so it seems like home;

clean/dust bedrooms, with a little 409 and elbow grease on the few (happily, *very* few) crayon marks on the walls and other signs that a four year old recently lived here;

have long (too long) conversation with mail carrier Steve, who brings a package for me mistakenly mailed to Nashville by catalog company (see above) along with the news that I have to pay him $4.80 if I want it. I don't have $4.80, he doesn't have change for a twenty, so we make plans to rendezvous later on his route, where I will bring him the cash;

use the excuse of needing a five-dollar-bill to drive to Jimmy John's to get a sub for lunch;

visit garden center to buy annuals that I plant annually on my patio;

drive around the neighborhood trying to find mail carrier Steve to pay him $4.80 so I can get my package;

finally find mail carrier Steve after first spotting nearly every other mail carrier in the neighborhood, and have long (too long) conversation about where I was all year, what I do, and whether student athletes at the University of Illinois study hard.

This was all before noon. I think I'm turning into my mother.

I heart you, satirical media outlets!

The Onion, this is why I heart you!

Stephen Colbert, this is why I heart you!

Gunflint Trail fire

!In the midst of relocation and a week without internet (is that like a day without sunshine?), I've been worried sick about friends on the Gunflint Trail, where a wild fire sparked by a campfire early last week has burned over 75,000 acres (over 36,000 on the U.S. side). The fire has forced evacuations of homes and businesses, closed BWCA access points on the Gunflint Trail side, and resulted in the loss of property. The fire apparently is now 50% contained on the U.S. side. After a very rough weekend, it appears that things are getting better.

These two sites have good info and updates on the fires. I have also been following the more human scale of the fires on Sue Prom's Boundary Waters Blog. Sue and her husband Mike run Voyageur Canoe Outfitters at the end of the trail; they were evacuated early last week and have been very busy as members of the Gunflint Trail Volunteer Fire Department.

As many of you know, finnfam spends a big chunk of July at Bearskin Lodge on the Gunflint Trail and our friends there are like family. Fortunately Bearskin is in good shape so far and we can't wait for our two weeks this year. We have promised them that we'll be there, come hell or high water (something they'd probably love to have right now).

As I wrote last summer, fire is one way that the forest regenerates itself. But this is a very tough start to the summer season on the trail.

THINK RAIN.