18

I have finally finished one of the Pulitzer Prize winning novels: Empire Falls. I loved this book! I grew up in New Hampshire, the granddaughter of mill workers. The area I grew up in had a lot of old mills, I know this place. I thought Russo did a bang up job evoking the sense of place, the beliefs and feelings of the people. I raced right through it and loved every word. Great book.

November Update

35. Replaced the DVD player--I had a gift certificate to amazon, so I just went for it. I had to buy a craptastic one because our tv is so old and crappy.
64. Make all my Christmas presents for Christmas 09--I'm working on it. I have five done, and am in for a big push this month. Must make something nearly every day. Full report on Stitch Bitch. (At left is the felted wool pomander I made for my grandmother, directions here.)
79. Date night. Last night the dude and I went out to homemade spaghetti at the local dive (they only do it Sunday and Tuesday). I turned to the dude and said, "I guess this is our date this month." He said we could go home and watch a movie, but the Steelers/Ravens game was important in my pool. (I overtook the leader last night!) Not big and fancy but out and adult-like.
98. Help parents clear out NH house for sale. We worked on it again over Thanksgiving. I think we're really getting there. In fact, they are leaving soon for their house in Florida. I think there will only be one more trip--when they close.

And a fail
71. Purge five things from every room in the house on (each) November 22, National Declutter Day--oops! missed the deadline, but I will try to correct it this week.

#1

On November 1, the dude and I used our free tickets to see Capitol Steps. Everyone kept raving about it; we were really looking forward to it.

At the start of the show, theater management had everyone looking under their seats for tickets again. The couple sitting next to us said they thought it was a bunch of hooey, that they weren't really giving away tickets. So of course I had to tell them we had won tickets to that show.

Let me tell you, it was really...average. I think we may have perceived it as being worse than it was because the woman sitting directly behind the dude laughed hysterically at every single sketch, every song, every lame ass joke. Had she never watched The Daily Show? Had she never been out of the house at all? It was very Jay Leno, middle of the road, silly and inoffensive. It certainly wasn't the cutting-edge political humor that we were, perhaps rather naively expecting. We left at intermission.

I also got Pioneer Woman's new cookbook. I've made the enchiladas and I know I'll be making more things from it.

In my last update I reported that I was committed to spending 30 minutes in the craft room...well that didn't go anywhere. And I've just been in NH working on #98 and I've thrown more crap into the craft room. Sigh. That room might be destined to be a never-ending problem.

I've been keeping up with writing to my grandmothers (thank you notes this time), having a happier outlook (#86) and talking to my mother (#100).

I'm hoping the upcoming holidays provide the little push I need to get more things done around the house. We'll see.

#22 More Cooking

Last night's dinner was Texican Beef Stew, one of my all time favorite crock pot recipes. To accompany it, I decided to make Ina Garten's buttermilk cheddar biscuits from Barefoot Contessa's Back to Basics.

Oh my achin' God. Those were awesome. I know I am not southern, but I try to live my dietary life as though I were. That is, I have eaten a lot of biscuits in my time all across this great land of ours. These were the best I have ever had. Best right out of the oven, best cooled down later in the evening, best the next day for breakfast.

Oh, and on Sunday, the dude, Sissy, my cousin and her husband and I went to see David Sedaris at the Keswick Theatre. He was hilarious reading essays he was working on for his next book. We all really enjoyed it. The theater had a giveaway of tickets for Capitol Steps. We had to look under our seats to see if we won. Four of us look under our seats...nothing. So I say to the dude, look under your seat to see if you won. (He hadn't heard the announcement, which to his credit, was very low and mumbly.) So he looks at the floor under his seat. I said, "No. Feel the bottom of your seat for an envelope or something." And he says, "For an envelope...like this?" as he whips out an envelope. He won tickets! Since the show is November 1, that will make three months of cultural events. (And since we went to see Lorrie Moore read in September it's really four events in three months.)

Monthly Update

I don't know why I have been neglecting this poor little blog. Maybe because I have been neglecting this poor little list. I did manage, perhaps accidentally, to do a few items on the list.

1. #1: We went to the Greek Fair on the 16th. For dinner, the dude and I shared a wonderful lamb shank, spanakopita and tyropita. You almost never find the latter--just cheese. Just wonderful. We bought four to take to Sunday dinner because it's my sister's favorite. We got to see some young people dance traditional dances wearing traditional clothes. Later, when we ate dessert--baklava sundae--we were entertained by a Greek singer.
2. #18: I started Marilynne Robinson's Gilead. It's pretty slow going. Of course, I saw Lorrie Moore read last week, so I started reading her new book instead. Perhaps this is why I haven't read all of the Pulitzer winners...
3. #24: I took out Thoroughly Modern Milkshakes and made a "coffee cabinet" that's Rhode Island for a coffee frappe. That's New England for a coffee milkshake. I didn't make any other shakes because so many of them ended up having half a pint of ice cream per serving. Interferes with #83.
4. #64: I have finished three--my mother's mermaid cross-stitch, my sister's "sisters" cross-stitch, and my grandmother's "martini" cross-stitch. You can find those on my other blog.
5. #70. We've actually been going great guns on this project. The dude and I alphabetized all our books, dividing them into five categories--fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays, and reference. Well, six if you count his shelf of chess theory books. I have entered all our fiction onto Library Thing (and all of the chess theory).
6. #72 Yesterday I put 30 minutes into organizing the craft room--you can hardly tell I was in there. But I'm committing to 30 minutes a day.
7. #98: I talked to my mother yesterday about various things she wants me to take from the house. I think I'm going to call this one done when they actually sell the place!

20. Watch Roger Ebert's 102 Films to See Before You Die

I've always been a fan of Roger Ebert. Our taste in movies runs parallel, we look for similar qualities in good films and are willing to put up with similar things in crap films. So it only makes sense to see the movies he thinks are most important to the viewing public.

I have already seen some of them. I am not counting movies that I have seen parts of, and I've seen parts of lots of these.

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Stanley Kubrick
2. The 400 Blows (1959) Francois Truffaut
3. 8 1/2 (1963) Federico Fellini
4. Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) Werner Herzog
5. Alien (1979) Ridley Scott
6. All About Eve (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz
7. Annie Hall (1977) Woody Allen
8. Apocalypse Now (1979) Francis Ford Coppola
9. Bambi (1942) Disney
10. The Battleship Potemkin (1925) Sergei Eisenstein
11. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) William Wyler
12. The Big Red One (1980) Samuel Fuller
13. The Bicycle Thief (1949) Vittorio De Sica
14. The Big Sleep (1946) Howard Hawks
15. Blade Runner (1982) Ridley Scott
16. Blowup (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni
17. Blue Velvet (1986) David Lynch
18. Bonnie and Clyde (1967) Arthur Penn
19. Breathless (1959 Jean-Luc Godard
20. Bringing Up Baby (1938) Howard Hawks
21. Carrie (1975) Brian DePalma
22. Casablanca (1942) Michael Curtiz
23. Un Chien Andalou (1928) Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali
24. Children of Paradise Marcel Carne
25. Chinatown (1974) Roman Polanski
26. Citizen Kane (1941) Orson Welles
27. A Clockwork Orange (1971) Stanley Kubrick
28. The Crying Game (1992) Neil Jordan
29. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Robert Wise
30. Days of Heaven (1978) Terence Malick
31. Dirty Harry (1971) Don Siegel
32. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) Luis Bunuel
33. Do the Right Thing (1989) Spike Lee
34. La Dolce Vita (1960) Federico Fellini
35. Double Indemnity (1944) Billy Wilder
36. Dr. Strangelove (1964) Stanley Kubrick
37. Duck Soup (1933) Leo McCarey
38. E.T. -- The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) Steven Spielberg
39. Easy Rider (1969) Dennis Hopper
40. The Empire Strikes Back (1980) Irvin Kershner
41. The Exorcist (1973) William Friedkin
42. Fargo (1995) Joel & Ethan Coen
43. Fight Club (1999) David Fincher
44. Frankenstein (1931) James Whale
45. The General (1927) Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman
46. The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola
47. Gone With the Wind (1939) Victor Fleming
48. GoodFellas (1990) Martin Scorsese
49. The Graduate (1967) Mike Nichols
50. Halloween (1978) John Carpenter
51. A Hard Day's Night (1964) Richard Lester
52. Intolerance (1916) D.W. Griffith
53. It's a Gift (1934) Norman Z. McLeod
54. It's a Wonderful Life (1946) Frank Capra
55. Jaws (1975) Steven Spielberg
56. The Lady Eve (1941) Preston Sturges
57. Lawrence of Arabia (1962) David Lean
58. M (1931) Fritz Lang
59. Mad Max 2 / The Road Warrior" (1981) George Miller
60. The Maltese Falcon (1941) John Huston
61. The Manchurian Candidate (1962) John Frankenheimer
62. Metropolis (1926) Fritz Lang
63. Modern Times (1936) Charles Chaplin
64. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam
65. Nashville (1975) Robert Altman
66. The Night of the Hunter (1955) Charles Laughton
67. Night of the Living Dead (1968) George Romero
68. North by Northwest (1959) Alfred Hitchcock
69. Nosferatu (1922) F.W. Murnau
70. On the Waterfront (1954) Elia Kazan
71. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) Sergio Leone
72. Out of the Past (1947) Jacques Tournier
73. Persona (1966) Ingmar Bergman
74. Pink Flamingos (1972) John Waters
75. Psycho (1960) Alfred Hitchcock
76. Pulp Fiction (1994) Quentin Tarantino
77. Rashomon (1950) Akira Kurosawa
78. Rear Window (1954) Alfred Hitchcock
79. Rebel Without a Cause (1955) Nicholas Ray
80. Red River (1948) Howard Hawks
81. Repulsion (1965) Roman Polanski
82. The Rules of the Game (1939) Jean Renoir
83. Scarface (1932) Howard Hawks
84. The Scarlet Empress (1934) Josef von Sternberg
85. Schindler's List (1993) Steven Spielberg
86. The Searchers (1956) John Ford
87. The Seven Samurai (1954) Akira Kurosawa
88. Singin' in the Rain (1952) Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
89. Some Like It Hot (1959) Billy Wilder
90. A Star Is Born (1954) George Cukor
91. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) Elia Kazan
92. Sunset Boulevard (1950) Billy Wilder
93. Taxi Driver (1976) Martin Scorsese
94. The Third Man (1949) Carol Reed
95. Tokyo Story (1953) Yasujiro Ozu
96. Touch of Evil (1958) Orson Welles
97. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) John Huston
98. Trouble in Paradise (1932) Ernst Lubitsch
99. Vertigo (1958) Alfred Hitchcock
100. West Side Story (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise
101. The Wild Bunch (1969) Sam Peckinpah
102. The Wizard of Oz (1939) Victor Fleming

I've put the ones I need to see in the netflix cue.

Restaurants and other updates

This weekend was a bonanza of entertainment. On Friday night the dude and I went to his coworkers birthday party at Cuba Libre. Cuban food. It was pretty good. A lot more upscale than the Cuban we used to go to all the time in L.A. But not necessarily better. The tres leche cake was out of this world, though.

Then last night we went to Eulogy Belgian Tavern. They have an excellent selection of beers in bottles and on draught, and if when we go back, I'll have to try something other than the Saison Dupont. While I love me a bready beer, I think I might go with a dirty ho next time. Then we raced off to the movies to see In the Loop. Hilarious characters with an unfortunately depressing subject matter. We enjoyed it quite a bit. Gasp, does that sound like a ...date?

It seems like I am doing pretty well on the things that require eating, not so much on the rest of it...I'm sure I'll get into the swing!